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A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS Discovery to Independence By Abraham Hoffman 1 © 2014 Abraham Hoffman 2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION----------------------------------------------------------CHAPTER 1: THE AGE OF DISCOVERY---------------------------CHAPTER 2: THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE-----------------------------CHAPTER 3: THE SPANISH CONQUEST--------------------------CHAPTER 4: EXPLORING THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE----CHAPTER 5: HISPANIC SOCIETY IN A NEW WORLD---------CHAPTER 6: SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE-------------CHAPTER 7: COLONIAL BRAZIL-----------------------------------CHAPTER 8: FRANCE IN THE AMERICAS-----------------------CHAPTER 9: ENGLAND IN THE AMERICAS---------------------CHAPTER 10: CHURCH AND STATE IN THE AMERICAS----CHAPTER 11: ECONOMIC AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES-CHAPTER 12: INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES------------------------CHAPTER 13: THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAS--CHAPTER 14: THE ERA OF INDEPENDENCE------------------------ 3 INTRODUCTION The History of the Americas course was the creation of Dr. Herbert E. Bolton, history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 20th century. A native of Wisconsin, trained at the University of Texas, Bolton was attracted to what became known as the Spanish Borderlands as an area for research. This region ran roughly from California to Florida and took in the northern area of today’s Mexico. Bolton’s books include The Spanish Borderlands, a survey of Spanish exploration from Baja California to Florida; The Rim of Christendom, a biography of Jesuit Father Eusebio Kino; Coronado, Knight of Pueblo and Plains, a biography of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado; Wider Horizons of American History, a collection of his essays calling for a hemispheric approach to studying American history; and other books and articles. Bolton taught history at Berkeley from 1909 until his death in 1953. In 1932 Bolton was elected president of the American Historical Association. His presidential address, “The Epic of Greater America,” noted the narrow focus of United States history which at the time was largely limited to political history, a New England perspective, and omission of minorities and women. Bolton argued for a wider geographic perspective that would include the contributions not only of English but also French, Spanish, and Dutch explorers and settlers. He claimed the Americas shared a common history that invited comparative study between the United States and its neighbors to north and south. Alas, Bolton didn’t practice what he preached. His own research and publications focused on the Spanish Borderlands, and he never made any study of Latin America in the colonial or national periods. Moreover, he wrote history from a Eurocentric viewpoint, omitting the perspective of the native peoples of the Americas. Nevertheless, Bolton struck a popular note with his appeal, and History of the Americas courses appeared in college catalogs across the nation. It should be noted, however, that Bolton was not the first historian to call for a wider perspective on the Americas. In 1898 Bernard Moses, a professor at Berkeley, called the study of the Spanish in America “the neglected half of American history.” He recommended “that we should adopt a more comprehensive view of 4 American history, and consider our institutions and achievements in relation to the institutions and achievements of other nations that began as we began on the virgin soil of a new world.” William R. Shepherd of Columbia University lamented in 1909 on the lack of balance in American history. “The share of the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the French in the several processes of discovery, exploration, colonization, and civilization should be studied from the several standpoints of their intrinsic interest and significance,” he said. Bolton himself urged these themes in his “Epic of Greater America” address. He called for “a broader treatment of American history, to supplement the purely nationalistic presentation to which we are accustomed.” Ironically, Bolton never wrote a textbook for the course. The closest he came to it was History of the Americas (1928, 1935), a compilation of lecture notes and outlines rather than a narrative text. That task was left to other scholars, of whom two stand out: Vera Brown Holmes and John Francis Bannon, S.J. In 1950 Holmes, a professor of history at Smith College, published A History of the Americas, Volume I (Volume II, covering the national period after independence, appeared in 1964). At 554 pages of text with only a few illustrations and maps, the book made up in thoroughness what it lacked in reader appeal to students not majoring in history. Its 22 chapters would have to be crammed into the college semester that usually ran to eighteen weeks. Father Bannon’s 1952 effort, History of the Americas, appeared in a similar two-volume format, the first volume with 34 chapters in 577 pages. Bannon’s volumes had no illustrations, and a minimum number of maps. These books followed a conventional approach to textbook publishing that by the end of the 1960s was already being dramatically revised (though not without some criticism, as modern textbooks are often accused of being “dumbed down’). Most students today would find these books far too demanding for a survey course. In recent years teachers of the “History of the Americas” course have had to scramble for a suitable text. Since none really exists, they make do with textbooks actually written for courses in Latin American history, then attempt to fill in the French, English, and Native American perspectives with supplementary books and articles. To tell the truth, I 5 find this approach a hodge-podge that ultimately satisfies neither teacher nor student. With this view in mind, I decided to create a narrative work that would try to fit the spirit of Bolton’s concept of Greater America rather than go into excruciating detail on every aspect of Western Hemisphere history. Thus I focus on the Aztec as a representative example and not the Inca, and Coronado but not De Soto, and so on. Students who wish to delve deeper into this fascinating subject may find the works of Holmes and Brown still useful, as well as the numerous monographs on specific topics. Each chapter ends with a list of recommended readings. Bolton and his generation of scholars wore blinders in one important area: they wrote largely from a Eurocentric perspective, and too often described conquistadores as heroic and romantic adventurers rather than the bloody butchers all too many of them were. In a similar vein, they gave little attention to native peoples of the Americas, seeing them as obstacles to European colonization. The clock cannot be turned backward, but we may use history to measure whether we have “progressed” over the past five centuries to a greater level and tolerance for each other’s culture and values. 6 CHAPTER 1: THE AGE OF DISCOVERY Prelude: The Vikings in America In reference to Columbus’s 1492 voyage, the question will often come up about the Vikings and whether they preceded Columbus to America by 500 years. The question merits attention, if only to clarify just what the Vikings accomplished and how what they did differs from the consequences of Columbus’s voyeage. The Vikings evolved from Norse pirate raiders over a period of about 300 years, from 700-1000 AD. Their descendants can be found in Ireland, England, France (Normandy region), Russia, Sicily, and the Holy Land, as well as Scandinavia. Aggressive and healthy, they found opportunities for leadership in their native Scandinavia limited by the available arable land. This accounts in part for their movement to other places. By the 10th century they had occupied remote islands off Britain, and they had set up a fairly successful colony in Iceland. Still, population pressures prompted exploration for new lands. Around AD 986 Eric the Red and a group of Vikings reached Greenland. Actually, there wasn’t much “green” there, but Erik apparently believed that calling the place “Snowland” would attract few people. The small settlement raised livestock and did some cultivation during the short growing season. Greenland’s agricultural limitations motivated Eric’s son, Leif Erickson, to sail further west in search of land for a new settlement. His voyage took him to the northeast coast of North America, including Newfoundland, Labrador, and the somewhat vaguely identified area called Vinland. They set up several small outposts but lacked the technology, population, and economic motive to deal with the land and its native people whom they called Skraelings (Eskimos). The Vikings and Eskimos had little to trade with each other, and their cultures seemed worlds apart. One tragic misunderstanding stands out: the Vikings gave the Eskimos milk to drink. Eskimos never had milk and were lactose intolerant, so the milk made them ill. They then suspected the Vikings of trying to poison them. Hostilities commenced, but the Vikings were outnumbered and in a 7 strange land, and by 1020 A.D. the Eskimos had driven them out of Vinland. Eventually the Greenland settlements declined as a prolonged cold weather pattern curtailed food production and made life there miserable. Viking trade items from the area, including furs and walrus tusks (for ivory), found few customers in Europe where better versions came from Russia, Asia, and Africa via routes blazed by adventurers such as Marco Polo. Greenland’s inhospitable climate forced the last of the Viking settlers out by about 1300 A.D. What does this mean for the “discovery” of America? The Vikings left little evidence of their presence in North America, and what they did leave were archaeological curiosities of a few stone foundations and personal items. They left no influence on the native people they encountered who in any event wanted nothing to do with them. Nevertheless, some people have argued for a much greater recognition of the Viking presence than they deserve (above their remarkable feats of seamanship and exploration). Minnesota serves as an extreme example of this argument. Viking fans claim the authenticity of the Kensington rune stone, generally considered by scholars as a fraud. The fans also assert that Vikings made it as far inland as Minnesota, with no reliable evidence to support the claim. Minnesotans, however, are a stubborn people; witness the naming of their football team, the Minnesota Vikings. Also, in 1965 came news of the discovery of a “Vinland Map” purporting to show North America around 1000 A.D. The map was quickly revealed to be a forgery. Without long-term consequences, the Viking explorations became a footnote to history, and the full chapter of Europeans discovering America would not occur until five centuries later. Discovering the Age of Discovery The Age of Discovery-beginning in the early 15th century and continuing in some areas into the 20th century-requires some definition and explanation. For the most part the term has been applied to the explorations of European nations, though other areas of the world, especially Asia, were investigating unknown lands. The Age of Discovery 8 coincides with the end of the Middle Ages, a thousand-year period framed by the fall of the Roman Empire at one end and the beginning of the Renaissance at the other. In the interim Europe suffered through economic collapse, the increasing power and eventual supremacy of the Catholic Church, the practice of feudalism, and the substitution of superstition and ignorance for inquiry and understanding. At the third grade level, eight-year-old children are usually taught that “Columbus discovered America because he wanted to prove the world was round.” Beyond the basic inaccuracies of this sentence (and, given its widespread acceptance, just how inaccurate it is), there is the question of who would be asked in 1492 if they even thought the world was round. Most people in Europe couldn’t have cared less, because most people were peasants and serfs who never went more than ten miles in any direction from the place where they were born. Medieval theologians cared if they ran across anyone willing to challenge the accepted order of things, and even well after the Middle Ages were history, Galileo could get into trouble over his conception not of a round earth but of the earth’s place in the universe. A round earth would have been important to merchants and seamen, and they knew it was round anyway. Exploration and discovery did not hinge on the sphericity of the earth, but how unknown were the unknown parts. The question was how to get past the unknown to the known, as Marco Polo had done by going from the known of Italy across the unknown of Asia to reach the (somewhat) known of Cathay (China). The degree of mystery about the world and the desire to penetrate the unknown depended on a wide range of factors. Political and social developments had to wait for technological changes in the designs of ships and invention of more accurate navigating instruments. At the height of the Middle Ages a succession of European crusaders had invaded the Holy Land, fighting Muslims, building castles, and learning of different cultures. When the Christians and Muslims tired of trying to kill each other, they learned quite a bit about the possibilities of economic exchange. The Middle East had access to or cultivated a large number of products unknown to Europe. In an age lacking in refrigeration, Europeans salted meat and fish to preserve them-an efficient if not particularly palatable way to prevent such foods from rotting. The 9 crusaders learned of the virtues of pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, oregano, and other spices that either helped preserve food or enhanced its taste. They also found out about silk, jade, coffee, and other items that enhanced the quality of life. These trade goods found their way back to Europe, but at first only the nobility could afford them. Over time the demand for such products increased as the economy of Europe improved. Cities grew, and with the cities grew a middle class. The terrible plague epidemics of the 14th century resulted in a shortage of labor, and peasants fled serfdom for opportunities in the cities. By the 15th century a European middle class had come to expect products from the Far East. Marco Polo was probably the most famous of the merchants who connected Europe to Asia over the silk road. For centuries imagination had served Europe as a substitute for knowledge. Religion and science were so entwined it was impossible to describe a natural phenomenon without doing so in religious terms. The Catholic Church, dedicated to the preservation of knowledge during the Dark Ages, was reluctant to accept new ideas as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance. An unknown African (or was it Asian?) interior was said to be the home of Prester John, a Christian king anxious to reunite with his coreligionists if a route could be found to where he lived. Such a route was fraught with peril-not of a flat world, but one filled with exotic and dangerous peoples and strange beasts. The maps of the Middle Ages proved totally inadequate as religion got in the way of geography (the conventional map of the world placed Jerusalem at the center and Paradise to the east). The best way to overcome lack of knowledge was to find things out. The lure of the spice trade, the riches of the Far East, even finding Prester John, helped motivate the monarchs of rising national states to sponsor explorations. And of the new nations, none was more interested to do so than Portugal. Portuguese Explorations In 1415 Portugal was a fully independent nation free of Muslim and Spanish political influences. A look at a map of Europe shows that 10 Portugal was not a Mediterranean nation. Its rivers and seaports opened to the Atlantic Ocean, and so its interest lay in areas that France, Austria, Spain, and England were not concerned with at the time. The Battle of Ceuta, fought between the Portuguese and North African Muslims in 1415, won Portugal a toehold on the African continent opposite the Strait of Gibraltar. However, the Portuguese quickly realized that winning at warfare didn’t necessarily translate into peacetime profit. Caravans had brought gold, silver, copper, brass, silks, and spice to Ceuta, but no more. The Portuguese had to learn to contact and reestablish trade communication with the Muslim caravans, and to resolve the apparent contradiction of beng merchants and Christian crusaders. Fortunately for the Portuguese, they figured out how to do so. Between 1415 and 1460 Portugal had a leader who helped broaden the small nation’s perspective on the world. Prince Henry was the third son of John I and as such had virtually no chance of inheriting the throne. What he did was to dedicate his life to promoting geographic discovery. At Sagres, Land’s End-the point of land beyond which was the open seaHenry created a school for geographic knowledge. He collected a library of charts, maps, instruments, quadrants, captain’s logs, books, and other information sources. Sagres ran a cartography school, and pilots and navigators were trained there. To apply a modern term, Henry was an equal-opportunity employer who hired Christians, Jews, and Muslims for their abilities without worrying about their religious beliefs. Unlike Christopher Columbus, who later on in the century would use established information whether it was accurate or not, Henry encouraged finding out about the unknown. For Portugal, this meant the Atlantic coast of Africa. Reports about the continent to the south claimed that Africa was a peninsula and that if a ship rounded its cape, it would be in the Indian Ocean and within accessible distance of the Far Eastern spice trade. However, this view contradicted Ptolemaic geography that after 1,200 years still carried great influence in Europe (and especially for Columbus). Ptolemy, a second-century Roman geographer, had drawn maps of Europe and the world that had survived the Medieval period. His European cartography was quite accurate, and the outline of Ptolemy's’Europe looks pretty much the way it does on modern maps. His other efforts were less successful. If Ptolemy was to be believed, the 11 Indian Ocean was a closed area, with Africa connected to the Antarctic continent. Which view was correct? A revival of Ptolemy’s work in the late Middle Ages made him very authoritative, and it would take some effort to undo his incorrect ideas. Ptolemaic geography claimed the earth was ¾ land and ¼ water-the reverse was true. He held to a geocentric theory in which the earth was the center of the universe. And he was wrong about the circumference of the planet, claiming it was about 18,000 miles-twothirds its actual size. These beliefs would have to be challenged and proved wrong, and the Portuguese would be the first to test the veracity of Ptolemaic geography. Cape Bojador is an obscure pimple on the coast of North Africa. Insignificant by today’s standard of geography, it presented a psychological barrier to anyone who would dare sail south along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Sailors believed that rocks and other perils awaited them at Bojador. Prince Henry pushed for a greater effort to get around the cape. It took twenty years, but in 1435 Portuguese ships went past the cape and found they could sail further south. Along the way Portugal claimed the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and Madeira. Spain awakened somewhat tardily to the Atlantic islands but put in its claim for the Canary Islands. As the years went by, Portugal traveled further and further down the coast of Africa, mapping, exploring, and making contact with African kingdoms. Prince Henry offered an annual prize to the captain who sailed furthest south for that year. In 1441 the Portuguese reached Cape Blanco. Four years later they concluded a fateful trade connection near the cape and brought back 200 Africans to be sold as slaves. These were people whose nation had lost in war to the kingdom that sold them to the Portuguese. It marked the beginning of a trade in human beings that would go on for more than 400 years. Although slavery dated to biblical times as a non-racial consequence of winners over losers, the African slave trade would put a racial definition on slavery that had enormous consequences for the future. Portuguese exploration southward continued after Prince Henry’s death in 1460. Although Henry never went on any of the voyages, his leadership and promotion of exploration earned him in history the 12 nickname of “the Navigator.” After crossing the Equator, the Portuguese found themselves sailing in the Southern Hemisphere under a different set of geographic rules. In 1485 the Jewish astrologer-mathematician Joseph Vizinho, under the sponsorship of John II of Portugal, worked out how to determine the latitude south of the Equator by the height of the sun at midday. Vizinho also translated Abraham Zacuto’s Almanac Perpetuum into Latin; this was a major guide for finding one’s position at sea by the declination of the sun. Zacuto, a Jewish mathematician, was exiled from Spain in 1492. A more tolerant John II welcomed him and his knowledge to Portugal. In 1487 Bartholemu Dias, sailing for Portugal, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and proceeded into the Indian Ocean, more by accident-a storm-than design. South of the Equator, the North Star was no longer visible, and seamen had to trust to the newest available knowledge when old information no longer worked. When Dias returned to Portugal in December 1488, enormous crowds cheered his arrival in Lisbon. One man in the crowd probably didn’t cheer: Christopher Columbus, in town to see John II on getting sponsored for his idea to reach the Indies by sailing westward. Columbus knew that the king would never back him, since Dias had shown the viability of sailing around Africa to the Indies. As a little-known footnote, John II didn’t rely just on coastal expeditions to find a route to the Indies. In 1487 he sent two men overland across Africa to Ethiopia and India. Pedro da Conilha made it as far as Goa on the western coast of India, and he traveled back to Cairo, Egypt. After many adventures he remained stuck in Ethiopia. But his reports did get back to Portugal, and he confirmed India could be reached by sea. Columbus and the Atlantic Surprise Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, an Italian city-state (there would be no nation of Italy until 1860), in 1451. Two years later the Turks captured Constantinople, the city strategically located at the Bosphorus separating Europe from the Anatolian Peninsula (modern Turkey). The Crusades had long since failed to keep a Christian/European political presence in the Eastern Mediterranean area, and the Turks effectively controlled the region from Turkey down through Palestine, 13 Egypt, and much of North Africa. In other words, the Turks blocked the land route east to Cathay. Any merchant traveling the Silk Road had to pay excessive tribute to the Turks. Prices for Far Eastern products soared. How to get around the Turkish blockade? The Portuguese were still cautiously heading down the African coast. Columbus grew up hearing stories of the Turks and how they had curtailed Genoese trade. He became a sailor, rose to the rank of captain, and acquired extensive sailing experience. Gradually he formulated the idea of sailing west to get to the Indies, Cathay, and Cipango (Japan). However, he tended to read those sources of information that confirmed his interpretations and preconceived ideas about geography, and he accepted Ptolemaic theory as accurate. In the 1480s Columbus tried to gain audiences with monarchs in France, England, Portugal, and Spain, but no one accepted his proposal. Often in modern times the impression is given that Columbus failed to convince ignorant royal advisers of the rightness of his ideas. But one doesn’t get to be a royal adviser by being ignorant. They turned him down not because they thought the world was flat, but because their math was better than his. Royal advisers preferred the geometry of Eratosthenes who around 250 B.C. calculated the circumference of the earth at about 23,000 miles, very close to the actual number. Columbus preferred Ptolemy’s figure that was a third short. Moreover, in matters of distance, water, and provisions, Columbus was proposing a poor business venture since all these estimates were way off. Columbus finally found a sponsor in 1492 when he returned to Spain after an earlier refusal. This time he arrived when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were in a good mood. Christian Spain had defeated Granada, the last Moorish (Muslim) stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. Ferdinand, interested in Mediterranean politics and an alliance with Austria against France, paid little attention to Columbus. But Isabella heard him out. Columbus laid out his proposal: for establishing a viable westward route to the Indies he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea; governor of all the lands he discovered; a tenth part of the wealth he found; and the expedition would be outfitted at no expense to himself (one begins to see why the other monarchs had turned him down). 14 Queen Isabella approved of the plan, though she didn’t have to pawn her jewels (a story invented by Washington Irving 350 years later). She ordered three seaport towns to come up with ships and crews. As might be expected, the towns tried to get away with providing what they could get away with-two of the ships were so small, they are remembered only by their nicknames, Nina and Pinta, and a larger ship, the Santa Maria. Crewmen came from the cadre of sailors in search of a berth, as well as prison inmates offered the opportunity to go on a sea voyage instead of rotting in jail. On August 3, 1492, the Columbus expedition left the port of Palos, stopped for provisions at the Canary Islands, and then spent 33 days crossing the Atlantic westward before finding an obscure island in the Bahamas. In making this voyage, Columbus broke with sailing tradition by going out into the open sea. By contrast, the Portuguese sailing south always kept an eye on the African coast if possible. Being at sea with no land in sight made crews nervous. Columbus tried to reassure them by claiming that according to his calculations they hadn’t gone very far. Meanwhile, unknown to the crew, he kept a second log in which he entered what he believed was his own, more accurate measurement of the distance traveled. Ironically, Columbus’s lies to his crew were more accurate than his secret log! Since instruments of the time made it impossible to calculate longitude correctly, his error can be explained, though the fact remains that he wanted to believe he was further west than he actually was. On October 12, 1492 (Julian Calendar), land was spotted, though to this day it is not clear just which island in the Bahamas Columbus had reached. What is clear is his belief he had reached the Indies. The natives on the island wore no Eastern clothing as Marco Polo had described-in fact, they wore hardly any clothing. But Columbus found these islands consistent with what he knew about Asia-islands off the coast of a large continent-and so, believing he was in the Indies, he called the natives “Indians”-a misnomer that remains to this day. And he believed he had reached the Indies until the day he died, fourteen years later. Having reached his goal, Columbus had to determine how to return to Europe. Sailing around the Caribbean, checking out the islands, he came across major wind currents blowing from the west--the prevailing 15 westerly winds. These wind currents blew him back across the Atlantic to Spain and unlocked the mystery of trans-Atlantic travel. Columbus returned knowing nothing of North and South America, having seen only a few hitherto unknown islands that he claimed as the Indies-the same area that Portugal was inching closer to by going down and around Africa. European mathematicians checked their figures in consternation. How had he gone there and back so fast? The confusion spread by Columbus’s misinformation resulted in cartographers drawing some very bizarre world maps for the next half-century. The Spanish-Portuguese Wrangle When Columbus made his voyage in 1492, Portugal disputed his claim of reaching the Indies. At first the Portuguese said his find belonged to them. King John II of Portugal and Ferdinand of Spain agreed to take the dispute to Pope Alexander VI. The Pope split the difference with a line of demarcation down the so-called middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Both monarchs then agreed to the Treaty of Tordesillas on June 7, 1494. This agreement avoided war but was full of ambiguities about the papal line of demarcation. Enough ambiguity existed so that six years later Pedro Cabral, sailing for Portugal but blown westward off course in his effort to round Africa, found he was by land that appeared to be east of the demarcation line-land that Europe would soon know as Brazil. The wrangle delayed Portuguese efforts to reach the Indies (the “real” Indies, that is, not the areas Columbus claimed to have reached). In 1495 Manuel I, the new king of Portugal, sent Vasco da Gama on a voyage to the Indies. Da Gama prepared carefully, fitting out his two ships with the best maps, astronomical instruments, math tables, and supplies. Unlike Columbus, who had to persuade a monarch for ships and provisions, Da Gama went with the full endorsement of his king, setting out on July 8, 1497. The differences in the distance and time spent between Columbus and Da Gama is striking. Columbus had traveled 2,600 miles before a fair wind that took him from the Canaries to the Bahamas in 33 days. Da Gama, dealing with contrary winds and opposite currents, took a big swing from the Cape Verde Islands to the Cape of Good Hope, covering 3,700 16 miles in 93 days. From there he went to India, reaching the Malabar Coast on May 22, 1498. He was somewhat surprised to encounter Muslim merchants from North Africa who were fluent in Italian and Spanish, an indication of how important the Mediterranean trade had been before the Turkish blockade. Although Da Gama failed to establish good trade relations, he did come back with a cargo of spices that produced an enormous profit for its backers-and only 55 out of the original 170 crewmen who had begun the trip. On the second voyage in 1502 Da Gama brought a squadron of ships with him. To make sure that the king of Calicut got the message about how serious Portugal was to set up a trade connection, Da Gama ordered local merchants hanged, their bodies cut up, and their hands, heads, and feet tossed into a boat and sent to the king. Da Gama suggested the remains be made into a curry. The king of Calicut caved in. Returning with his ships loaded with trade goods, Da Gama left five of his ships in the area as a permanent Portuguese naval force. Portugal soon had a number of outposts in the Indian Ocean-the Ormuz gateway to the Persian Gulf (1507), the city of Goa on mainland India (1510, held by Portugal until the 1950s), Malacca (1511), and trade contacts with Siam, the Moluccas (the “Spice Islands”), and China. Venice and Genoa had tried to keep up a route through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, paying off the Turks. But the Portuguese route around the Cape of Good Hope led to commerce on the Atlantic side of Europe, to the cost of the Mediterranean traders. In 1503, the price of pepper in Lisbon was already just a fifth of the cost it was in Venice by way of Egypt. So it was that Portugal created the “Age of the Sea”-the treasures of the Orient moving west in great volume, with huge profits to merchants and lower costs to consumers. Arab and Chinese Explorations When the Portuguese reached India, Arab traders were already there. In fact, Arab traders could be found in the Mediterranean, Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe. So why didn’t the Arabs develop sea routes to Europe? The reality was they had little incentive to sail from the Indian Ocean around Africa to get to the same 17 place. The Arabian Peninsula region was a poor place to set up supply bases. Arabian expansion was at its most successful in land-based movement, not sea-based, and its expansion would continue into Europe well into the 17th century. Its high point (or low point, depending on whether one is an Arab or European) came in 1683 when the Turks knocked on the gates of Vienna, Austria, but failed to get the door open. Their presence in southeastern Europe in religion, culture, and politics remains to this day and to the tragedy of different peoples in the Balkans who still have problems learning to live with each other after 500 years. China’s attitude was totally different from Europe’s in issues of trade and expansion. Until the 15th century China had established trading posts in areas of the Indian Ocean all the way to Africa. Curiously, China did not seek trade; it sought recognition from others of Chinese greatness, displaying an ostentatious show of wealth and giving much of it away. This resulted in an odd imbalance of trade as great Chinese fleets, with huge ships and thousands of sailors, sailed around the Indian Ocean refusing to buy the products of other people while they gave away their own. The policy abruptly ended in 1433 when the Chinese emperor and his government turned inward, insulating itself against the rest of the world. The great ships were recalled and China sat removed from the technological and political changes of the rest of the world until the 19th century. China then realized just how costly its policy of isolation had been to the nation. In the might-have-beens of history, there is an interesting footnote to how the history of Europe and Asia might have been different. Around 1300 A.D. the Europeans and the Mongols (who ruled China at that time) almost worked out an alliance against their common enemy, the Muslims. However, the Europeans insisted that first the Mongols should convert to Christianity; then the alliance could proceed. The Mongols refused, no alliance resulted, and matters moved on from there. Consequences of the Atlantic Surprise Columbus made a total of four voyages to the Western Hemisphere. With each succeeding trip his authority declined. After the second voyage, Queen Isabella, unhappy at Columbus’s treatment and 18 enslavement of the native peoples (a devout Catholic, she had concerns about whether pagan people ignorant of Christianity could be enslaved), narrowed the interpretation of the original agreement. It was now understood that others could explore any area not under his jurisdiction. Now hundreds of adventurers crossed the Atlantic, ready to take a chance on the New World. New World. Columbus never realized he had traveled to a different destination than he had intended. His return with the prevailing westerly winds made round-trip travel across the Atlantic a reality. It was left to others in the years that followed to expand on his discovery, finding new lands and encountering peoples previously unknown to Europe. One of those adventurers was another Italian ship captain in the service of Spain, Amerigo Vespucci. On returning from a voyage to the “Indies,” he turned a small map over to a cartographer and mentioned he had seen a “new world.” New worlds were blank spaces to the Europeans and needed identification. The mapmaker thus put in the name “America” for the person who told him about it. Later explorations resulted in in the name being applied to both continents. And Columbus? Well, there’s Columbus, Ohio; Washington, District of Columbia (D.C.); the nation of Colombia; Columbia Pictures; and no doubt many other place names. But no continent. 19 For Further Reading Boorstin, Daniel. The Discoverers (1983). Elliott, John H. Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (1963). Hanke, Lewis, ed. Do the Americas Have a Common History? A Critique of the Bolton Theory (1964). Morison, Samuel E. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (1971). Morison, Samuel E. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (1974). Nowell, Charles E. The Great Discoveries and the First Colonial Empires (1954). Nunn, George E. The Geographical Conceptions of Columbus (1977). Parry, J.H. The Age of Reconnaissance (1963). Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise (1990). Sauer, Carl. The Early Spanish Main (1966). Ure, John. Prince Henry the Navigator (1977). Wright, Louis B. Glory, God, and the Gospel (1970). 20 CHAPTER 2: THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE When Columbus made his geographic error in believing he was somewhere in Asia instead of where he really was, he also misnamed the native peoples he encountered, creating a mistake that has endured for more than five centuries. To clarify the problem of the “Indies,” later geographers had to label the “West Indies” (where Columbus was) and “East Indies” (where he wasn’t), the former area including the Caribbean islands, the latter India, China, and the nearby Pacific islands. There was no general name, however, for the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. At their most specific, these people identified themselves by their tribal names. In a larger political context, they might be known by their confederation or, in the case of the most powerful groups, as a nation or empire. To this day many tribes are known not by their own names but by the names other people gave them. Thus some groups have Spanish or French names, whereas others have names that seem artificial to modern ears. In a modern era of political correctness and sensitivity, no one wishes to offend anyone by calling them by a name that might be taken as offensive. Yet controversy continues, as the Washington Redskins football team persists in using a name many people consider racist. Schools have been compelled to drop team and mascot names even as their alumni argue that tradition and loyalty have made names such as “Braves” and “Warriors” positive terms. Any term used to define the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere needs some qualification. Anthropologists often use the term Amerindian, combining geography with race, but it is an anthropological term, not something that native peoples use to define themselves. Similarly, aborigine is sometimes suggested, but the term is usually perceived to mean a primitive culture, and many areas in the Western Hemisphere had highly developed societies in their politics and architecture, so the term hardly fits for general use. “Native American” is very popular today, even though it utilizes the name of an Italian explorer, yet it was not used historically. Some native peoples have adopted the European terms as a way to promote their concerns: the American Indian 21 Movement (AIM) is such an example. Clearly, words like “savages” are out of fashion. Some groups have names that have extended over other peoples. “Aztecs” became a generic term for numerous groups living in the Valley of Mexico, where the Aztecs, also known as Mexica, were politically dominant at the time the Spaniards arrived. “Incas” served a similar purpose in Peru. The Maya Empire had peaked several centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. To use the word “tribe” also suggests a primitive culture, and the term is quite inaccurate for these advanced societies. The Aztec and Inca were nations, and they exercised imperial authority over subject peoples. Some scholars today attempt to avoid the name controversy by referring generically to indigenes, native peoples, or some other term that ultimately presents an outsider’s description. From the native viewpoint, there are activist groups that use the term “First People” or, borrowing from the European lexicon, “First Americans.” And, to add a touch of irony to the whole business, immigrants to the United States from India have the awkward experience of calling themselves “Indian Americans” and trying to explain they are not “American Indians.” Arrival of the Native Peoples in the Western Hemisphere For centuries after Europeans learned of the Western Hemisphere, they tried to explain how the native peoples got there, in the process usually betraying their own preconceptions and prejudices. There was (and is) the view that native peoples were the ten lost tribes of Israel, for example. At some point every nation or race with an agenda to promote claims some great influence over the hemisphere, arguing that native peoples were descendants from or influenced by Africa, Sumeria, Phoenicia, China, Wales, and other places, and even from the “lost continent” of Atlantis. A cottage industry of writers, some with impressive academic credentials, insists that the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere couldn’t have accomplished their architecture, craftsmanship, and science without outside help. At the most extreme viewpoint, Erick von Daniken argues that this outside help came from outer space. Regrettably, the general public tends to accept the most 22 outlandish theories rather than the conservative and cautious views of serious scholars. How else to explain that von Daniken’s book, Chariots of the Gods, has sold more than six million copies worldwide, whereas the press run of a serious work of archaeological scholarship is at the most 2,000 copies? “Popular” theories usually demand someone to prove a negative (“Prove that Indians didn’t originally come from Wales/Atlantis/etc.--I dare you”). The most generally accepted view among scholars, with considerable evidence to support it, is that native peoples crossed a land bridge over the Bering Strait during an ice age when the level of the oceans dropped. Estimates of this arrival vary widely. Most estimates fall between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago; a few daring archaeologists claim as much as 100,000 years, but again, anyone venturing such an extreme figure finds resistance and criticism from more conservative scholars. In any event, whether 10,000 or 50,000 years, either length of time may have been sufficient for migrating tribes to penetrate the areas of North and South America and to establish distinctive cultures. Those cultures varied widely, from the high level of civilization achieved by the Aztecs (discounting the matter of human sacrifice) and Incas to nomadic tribes lacking knowledge even of pottery and basketry. Some cultures built huge temples; for others, the village shaman sufficed for religious leadership. The most advanced cultures constructed great cities that rivaled those of Europe and even surpassed them in matters of hygiene and water distribution systems. In attempting to sort out the various native cultures, anthropologists number almost as many as the theories they propound. For example, if arranged by region, some seventeen (or sixteen or eighteen) groupings of Indian cultures emerge. It is difficult to arrange cultures by language or culture level because tribes speaking similar languages might be located hundreds of miles apart; whereas neighboring people sharing a similar culture may speak totally different languages. Anthropologists attribute the mix-up to migrations that took place over thousands of years. The native peoples of the Americas did not have a static history. Despite the best wishes of some writers who have idealized them, native people did not live in a Garden of Eden that lacked conflict or hardship. 23 They traveled from one place to another and in doing so met other peoples either in harmony or confrontation, often in regard to the right to hunt in a given territory. Some natives peoples built civilizations that thrived for hundreds of years and then moved on, leaving a modern age to ponder why the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde or the great Maya cities of southern Mexico, Guatemala, or Belize were abandoned. In some respects, especially in astronomy, mathematics, and architecture, some native civilizations were more advanced than contemporary European ones, if total society is consdered. Many European peasants in 1492 were no better off than Indians living at the bottom of a structured society. However, other tribes lived in close relationship with their environment, showing great adaptability but little intellectual advance. Much of the reason for this disparity, which also exists elsewhere on the planet, stems from a major choice made by people between some 11,000 and 13,000 years ago: whether to live as hunters and gatherers or to turn to cultivating the soil and becoming sedentary (staying in one place). This choice of life style assumed major importance in world history. The choice defined how a group of people would develop intellectually and culturally. Those societies that chose hunting and gathering of necessity had to limit their population size and growth. A hunting-gathering society that grew too large could easily exhaust the available food supply. Even with population in check, such a society was nomadic or semi-nomadic, following the sources of food. Although their hunting skills became highly developed, and their knowledge of edible plants enabled them to survive in areas where someone from modern times would starve, little time remained in the day to develop inventions or ideas that would advance the group materially and culturally. By contrast, agricultural societies could grow surpluses, enabling part of their population to devote time to develop religious views, acquire skills as artisans, and do some hard thinking about math and science. Throughout history, agricultural societies in the long run have triumphed over huntergatherers. The basic conflict has been going on for a long time; the Old Testament stories of Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau, exemplify the issue whether people live for the land, or if the land is for the people. A much more sophisticated version of this ancient argument continues today 24 as politicians and environmentalists argue over endangered species. Choose your side. How Inevitable was the Conquest of the Americas? The stunning victories achieved by Hernando Cortes over the Aztecs and Francisco Pizarro over the Incas were quite exceptional. Encounters between Europeans and native peoples more typically were tentative and cautious. “Conquest” over another people certainly did not occur all over both continents at once. The shifting of control (rather than a dramatic term like “conquest”) occurred to different cultures at different times in different places by different persons/nations, and it took hundreds of years. Our collective memory plays tricks on us: the most famous confrontations between whites and Indians in North America, for example, are concentrated in the period following the Civil War, roughly 18651890. This is the era when Hollywood’s motion pictures about the Old West and the conflicts between cowboys and Indians takes places. Such a focus can be very misleading if one considers the long evolution in firearms between the 16th and 19th centuries. Still, there is an inevitability in the meeting of a technologically advanced culture and one that lives in the Stone Age. Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere did not have the knowledge to create metal alloys. “Stone” age is a misleading term as there are many kinds of minerals that can be fashioned into tools and weapons. Even the sharpest obsidian blade, however, can be easily shattered. The usual focus of European technological advantage is on weapons, including steel swords, metal armor, and, over time, firearms. Just as important was literally anything made of metal, including tools we take for granted today: needles, fish hooks, scissors, knives, hatchets, axes, and metal pots and pans. These tools made tasks easier, as native peoples were quick to note. A second major factor in the subjugation of native peoples was the bringing to the Western Hemisphere of European animals and plants. Except for the llama and its cousins, the alpaca and the vicuna in the Andes range centering on Peru, the Western Hemisphere had no beasts of burden. Domesticated dogs could only carry a limited load. The native peoples lacked horses, mules, donkeys, goats, sheep, and pigs--what are 25 collectively called livestock. Mountain goats, bison, antelope, elk, deer-all were big animals hunted for food; there is no record of anyone domesticating an antelope to carry a load or pull a wagon. In any event, native peoples did not have use of the wheel. Although more advanced native cultures knew about the wheel, they didn’t use it, except as toys. Apparently it never occurred to them to have servants or slaves pull wheeled vehicles. Ironically, the more primitive the native culture, the more resistant it was to Eruopean conquest. This was proved time and again, from Caribs on the coast of Venezuela to Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico. The Spaniards found it much easier to replace the top layer of a fairly sophisticated society with Spanish culture. Indians could accept a Christian god as supreme since they had lost out to those who had worshiped such a god. The situation was somewhat different in North America where English colonists met natives who were primarily (though not exclusively) hunter/gatherers. For reasons that will be seen in a later chapter, the relationships between English and Indians quickly degenerated from tentative cooperation into adversary hostility. The tension was not helped by an Anglo culture, especially among Puritans, who looked on Indians as creatures of Satan. Some historians have compared the Western Hemisphere civilizations to a delicate plant with shallow roots-easily denied the ingredients necessary for independent survival, and caught by a growing dependence on European products. A Focus on the Aztecs The origins of the Mexica people, better known as the Aztecs, are shrouded in uncertainty. The prevailing folk belief is that they came south from the Sonoran Desert region, from a place called Aztlan (a name that has aroused modern controversial political and cultural debate). A nomadic tribe, the Aztecs settled eventually in the Valley of Mexico amid monuments left by earlier societies such as the Toltec. They arrived sometime around 1200 A.D. or possibly a couple of hundred years earlier, since the records are unclear. According to legend (not history), the Aztecs were following a prediction that called for them to stop where they 26 beheld an eagle perched on a cactus, eating a serpent. This image appears on Mexico’s national flag. However, the Aztecs told this story long after they had come to power in Mexico. As will be noted below, the Aztecs made the error of revising history to suit their myths. At first the Aztecs were subservient to the other city-states living around Lake Texcoco. As time went on they consolidated their power, defeated other nations in war, and became the dominant force in the region. By 1400 A.D. the Aztecs controlled all other peoples in the Valley of Mexico. They were allied with two other lake city-states, the Tlatlelolcans and the Xollocans, but the Aztecs ran the show. They collected tribute (taxes) in the form of goods and services from their subject city-states. Their method of conquest was simple: before making war on a rival, the Aztecs would offer fairly generous terms for the rival. If the Aztecs were refused, they gave a second chance to consider the terms, and then a third. If the issue came to war, the Aztecs fought only until the other tribe acknowledged defeat. They then set terms that were much harsher than if no resistance had been given. The Aztecs urged the losers to consider the surrender terms carefully and not complain later that the terms were too harsh. It didn’t take long for rival city-states to realize that life would be easier if they didn’t resist the Aztecs. By the early 15th century the Aztecs were all-powerful in the Valley of Mexico. They built a major city, Tenochtitlan, in the middle of Lake Texcoco and connected it to the mainland with several causeways that could easily be disconnected, making the city impregnable to attack. Spanish descriptions of Tenochtitlan compared it more than favorably with any city in Europe, and in many ways the cities of Europe came off second-best, especially in cleanliness and a piped water system. Despite their success, the Aztecs were self-conscious of their nomadic origins that didn’t seem noble enough for their current prominence. The ruling house therefore determined to establish their legitimacy as the People of the Sun, and they did this by making a most fateful decision: they destroyed all earlier records and wrote an “official” history that used myth in place of truth. Aztec ancestry was glorified and linked to the gods. The peoples of the Valley of Mexico were polytheistic. Each citystate had its own god, but they acknowledged the panoply of gods 27 worshiped by other tribes. Some seventy gods were objects of worship, arranged in a kind of power hierarchy with the most important gods being the ones worshiped by the strongest tribes. Under this system, Aztec gods were the most important and powerful: the Aztec Sun God, Huitzilopochtli, was elevated to major rank. Although subject tribes could worship their own gods, they had to acknowledge the supremacy of Huitzilopochtli. Its symbol was the hummingbird, but this was misleading. Huitzilopochtli was a god that demanded much from its worshipers. The greatest Aztec politician of the 15th century was Tlacaellel, brother of one emperor, adviser to several others, and, unfortunately for subject tribes, a man of good health who lived to age 98. Tlacaellel was responsible for making Huitzilopochtli the dominant god, and it was Tlacaellel who put human sacrifice on an assembly-line basis. A religious fanatic or a ruthless politician, Tlacaellel made human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism a regular ritual for worship of the Aztec Sun God. So it was that the subject tribes had to come up with levies of slaves for sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli. The number of sacrifices ran into the thousands annually. Victims were lined up in a row that went down the pyramid steps and beyond. The Aztecs viewed these sacrifices as a great honor. Those chosen for special occasions were treated with splendor for a year before the big date. Exceptionally good-looking candidates might be singled out for the honor of being flayed. As Cortes would find out (and use to his advantage) when he arrived in Mexico in 1519, subject tribes did not share the enthusiasm for human sacrifice as did the Aztecs, especially since it might be their sons and daughters, not only slaves, who could be selected for the levies. Besides Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs also worshiped other Valley of Mexico gods and believed the stories about them. Second only to Huitzilopochtli in the demand for human sacrifices was Tecazlipoca. A story about Tecazlipoca proved critical to the Aztecs when word first came about the Spaniards. Legends told of a quarrel between Tecazlipoca and another god, Quetzalcoatl. Somehow Tecazlipoca tricked Quetzalcoatl into disgracing himself, and he was forced into exile. However, Quetzalcoatl vowed some day to return. According to the legends, Quetzalcoatl had a fair skin and wore a beard--features that could also 28 describe the Spaniard and which made the Aztecs indecisive as to whether the Spaniards were invaders or emissaries of Quetzalcoatl. Captives taken in war provided many sacrifices for the Aztec gods; but once the Lake Texcoco region was pacified, the Aztecs had to come up with another method of obtaining sacrificial victims. They must certainly have known of the reluctance of their subject tribes to meet the levies for sacrifice. With no one daring to challenge the Aztecs through warfare, what legitimate method could be used? Tlacaellel hit on the idea of what became known as “flower wars.” These were mock wars with the subject city-states in which the point was to take prisoners who then would serve as sacrifices to the gods. Aztec participants were encouraged to fight well and avoid capture, lest they too wind up on the altar. Given the many accomplishments of the Aztecs, the worship of bloodthirsty gods has attracted the attention of scholars who have tried to understand and explain the Aztec preoccupation with gods who made such extreme demands. Some scholars have described Aztec religious beliefs as immature, comparing them to idol worship in the Old Testament. The story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrific his son Isaac, until God intervened, stands as a milestone in the evolution of religion: it isn’t necessary to prove one’s devotion by sacrificing human beings. It is interesting to note that Quetzalcoatl was considered a peace-loving god. In rejecting him and accepting the story of his exile, the native peoples of the Valley of Mexico may have made a pact with the devil, since the Quetzalcoatl myth predicted his return and by inference a change, perhaps an accounting, for their religious practices. Another school of thought comes from a group called the Berkeley demographers, led by scholars Woodrow Borah and Sherbourne F. Cook. According to Borah and Cook, the Valley of Mexico’s population may have been as high as 30 million, with no diseases to shorten life expectancy (a situation that would change dramatically when the Europeans showed up). The main food source, maize, was being cultivated on every acre of arable land in the region. Should the crop fail, a disastrous famine would result, and there appears to have been such famines in the past. Thus the sacrifices might be seen as a form of population control. 29 Aztec religious belief was very pessimistic in its outlook. The Aztecs kept two calendars, one secular and one religious. The religious calendar followed a cycle of eighteen months, twenty days to a month, with five days left over at the end of the year. Those five days were a time of anxiety and concern that the world was out of harmony until a new year’s cycle could begin. There was also a 52-year cycle, and Aztecs believed the world might end if something went wrong at the end of the cycle. In one of history’s amazing coincidences, the Spanish arrival in 1519 occurred at the same time as the end of a 52-year cycle. The Aztecs were a young enough nation to have some vertical mobility. It was possible for someone to rise above his station through valor in war, special talent as an artisan, or marrying well. There were several classes in the hierarchy of Aztec society. The pipiltin constituted the nobility. Children born to this class had to prove themselves worthy, usually in battle. The macehualtin were the commoners. A macehuale could advance to pipiltin status through bravery in war, but after three or four failed attempts to kill or capture an enemy, he lost all chance to rise above his station. Merchants were a class unto themselves, traveling to the limit of the Aztec Empire where the powerful chichimecas (hostile people) prevented further expansion. There were also Aztec slaves. To be a slave in Aztec society meant the person was not free but did have certain rights. Money could be saved to purchase freedom. A family could sell a son into slavery and then exchange that son for another. Aztecs loved gambling, and an overeager bettor could become a slave on a losing bet. Such servitude would be for a period of time, not for perpetuity (unless the gambler was really desperate). The Aztecs saw slavery as a position, not an inherent condition. However, slaves from subject tributes did not share the rights held by Aztec slaves, and often they were used as tribute payments and could end up as fodder for the sacrificial altar. The Aztecs spoke Nahuatl, a vibrant language still spoken by millions of people in Mexico today and even translated into the Roman alphabet. As the dominant society in the Valley of Mexico, the Aztecs imposed Nahuatl on their subject peoples, so that everyone spoke Nahuatl as well as their own language. This language was also written down in pictographic form, somewhat like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Notable also 30 was the quality of their arts in crafts, jewelry, gold, gems, and the decorations made of colorful bird feathers. Maize provided the basis of their agricultural economy. Its cultivation was very intensive, and surplus production freed people from farming to become priests, artisans-and idle nobles. Subject tribes contributed maize as part of their tribute payments. Cacao beans served both as beverage and as money, since people placed a value on it. Tenochtitlan had a major market center complete with officials who regulated commerce. By the early 1500s the pipiltin class threatened to upend Aztec society. Their large numbers required the Aztecs to expand and dominate other peoples to work for them, but they had just about reached their geographic limits. At their frontier the chichimecas were too strong to be defeated. A huge bureaucracy ran the Aztec Empire. It kept detailed records on tribute collections, transactions, and court litigations. But in its very power the Aztec Empire had created enemies who wanted a chance to get back at them. The Spaniards gave them that chance. Other Societies of Native Peoples If the Aztecs provide a case study of a “high” civilization in the Western Hemisphere, so did the Inca Empire in South America whose authority extended from Ecuador through Peru to Chile. In North America, the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley achieved a high level of culture as shown by their complex earth constructions. These were not properly appreciated until the 20th century provided the opportunity for aerial views. The range of native cultures in the Americas was wide enough to include the Pueblo peoples who lived in homes constructed of adobe brick, grew maize and other foods, and looked on war as a form of insanity. At the other end were tribes existing at the most primitive levels as the only means for survival in a hostile environment. In the grand scheme of things, however, it didn’t matter to the Europeans where the native peoples stood in the cultural spectrum of the Western Hemisphere. Depending on time, place, and circumstance, they would be conquered, exploited, and 31 exterminated as befitted the prerogatives of Europeans who brought an agenda that had little regard for native culture, language, crafts, or society. 32 For Further Reading Adams, R.E.W. Prehistoric Mesoamerica (1991). Berdan, Frances. The Aztecs of Central Mexico, An Imperial Society (1982). Coe, Michael. The Maya (1956). Denevan, W.M., ed. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (1976). Fagan, Brian. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent (2000). Hagan, William T. American Indians (1961). Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (1964). Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Indian Heritage of America (1968). Lanning, E.P. Peru Before the Incas (1967). Moseley, M.E. The Incas and Their Ancestors (1992). Washburn, Wilcomb.The Indian in America (1975). 33 CHAPTER 3: THE SPANISH CONQUEST It would be nice to read a history of the European encounter with the peoples of the Western Hemisphere that tells us the meeting was peaceful and mutually beneficial, that the Europeans were all nice guys, tolerant of the religions, cultures, and social lives of the people they met, and that everyone lived happily ever after. It would also be nice not to have terrible diseases such as smallpox, malaria, bubonic plague, cholera, and many other epidemics that killed millions of native peoples in the New World in a tragedy unintended by the Europeans who brought those diseases with them. Unfortunately, this is not the way history works. The encounter between Europeans and indigenous peoples was confrontational and, for both sides, trapped within the beliefs of their times. In 1492 Europe consisted of nations run by monarchs who governed lands by the authority of their inheritance. Nationality as we understand it today was in its infancy. Germany and Italy as nations did not then exist, nor would they for almost four hundred years. England claimed land in France because Henry V had married a French princess almost a century earlier. Spain and Austria worked out an alliance through a double wedding, resulting ultimately in the rule of Carlos I of Spain who happened also to control areas that spoke German, Dutch, Italian, and French, as well as Spanish. The Catholic Church controlled European religious belief; Martin Luther did not break with the Church for another quarter century. Spain had only recently emerged from the Reconquista, a centuries-long war against the Muslims who had controlled the Iberian Peninsula since the early 8th century. The war’s end left many veterans inured to hardship and battle and only too willing to try their luck in a new world. Younger men also answered the call to adventure. In many ways, these men thought in medieval terms, for such thinking still had influence as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, and in the next century to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. The men who would be called the Conquistadores did not trouble themselves about new developments in literature and science, though they were interested in any technological improvements in firearms and cannon. 34 For almost thirty years after Columbus’s first voyage Spanish explorers knocked around the Caribbean area, founding settlements on Hispanola, Cuba, and other islands. Their main goal still was to get to the riches of the “Indies,” and they believed they could get to China which according to their maps stretched much farther east than it actually did. So they persisted in calling the New World the Indies (later geographers would correct the error somewhat by the terms East Indies [now Indonesia] and West Indies [the Caribbean]). The initial colonization of the Caribbean islands quickly decimated the native inhabitants. The Spaniards found these peoples generally docile and easy to command; the culture shock of these alien beings with their terrible weapons may have had something to do with native paralysis. In any event, the simultaneous demands of the Spaniards that the natives produce gold (of which there was little on the islands) and food, along with the introduction of diseases to which the indigenous people had no immunities, left the Spaniards with few people to exploit. The gap would eventually be filled by their importing African slaves and establishing sugar cane and tobacco plantations. In the meantime, other areas awaited conquest. The Spanish Crown commissioned adventurers at their own expense to take over territory largely unknown, in return for which the Crown would get the royal quinto-one-fifth of all profits from production of gold and silver. The Crown was also thinking in medieval terms, valuing gold and silver as bullion, not as capital for investment. In the long run this short-sighted view of precious metal would cost Spain dearly. Meanwhile, the possibility of gold became an obsession for Spanish explorers. The contrast between Spanish avarice and the policies of Portugal and, later, England and France, is dramatic. Other European nations would establish trading posts to exchange the goods of Europe for the products of Africa, Asia, and North America. Imperialist conquest of those areas would eventually take place some four centuries later, but without the dramatic success scored by Spain in Mexico and Peru. The Spanish successes shaped the Americas far differently than in other regions where Europeans colonized native peoples, though the imperialism of the 19th century would leave a similar mark in Africa and Asia. The most obvious example would be the imposition of European languages on the Americas and the relegation of native languages to the 35 tribes that spoke them and few others. Of all the nations of the Americas to this day, only Paraguay has a native language, Guarani, coequal with a dominant European language, Spanish. Early efforts at expanding operations out of the Caribbean met with little success and much failure. The Spaniards realized finally that island Indians had not made the gold ornaments they wore. They must have obtained them through trade from somewhere. But where? The Spaniards matched their incorrect understanding of the geography of the region with what they knew of Asian geography and came up with a correct conclusion of sorts. They knew the Spice Islands lay to the south of a large land mass, Asia. Whether the islands they had conquered were or were not the Moluccas, there had to be a large land mass nearby. Explorers soon reported such a mass did exist, in fact two of them, and knowledge would build upon information until by the 1550s a map of the world could be drawn that would be familiar in its outlines to modern eyes, even with errors of scale and topography. While the Spaniards were thus working out a geographic understanding of the North American and South American continents, the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico were becoming increasingly alarmed by reports of these alien invaders. It was at this point that the Aztecs became trapped in their own hubris. They had destroyed their early records in exchange for a mythical past that glorified them as supreme rulers over other tribes. Now they had no choice but to trust in those myths. Emperor Moctezuma II, hearing reports of white bearded men in the Caribbean, believed they were emissaries of the god Quetzalcoatl, perhaps Quetzalcoatl himself. Quetzalcoatl was known to have a beard, unusual among the native peoples of the Americas. As an absolute ruler, Moctezuma executed messengers who brought him bad news and priests who failed to interpret his dreams or omens. Naturally, messengers and priests were inclined to tell him what he wanted to hear in order to protect their lives. If Moctezuma believed Quetzalcoatl was about to return, it would be best not to disagree with him. There were warning signs about the Spaniards that Moctezuma chose to ignore. It became obvious from early contacts, and certainly when Cortes had landed, that the Spaniards did not speak Nahuatl. And surely the Aztecs must have known that the “emissaries” were not 36 immortal. Over the previous twenty years the corpses of shipwrecked Spaniards had been washed ashore along the east coast of Mexico. Instead of thinking through the implications of these reports, the emperor increased the human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli and Tecazlipoca, which meant the subject tribes had to produce more victims for the sacrificial altar. And this meant that when the Spaniards arrived on the mainland, they would find allies willing to be rid of Aztec rule. Cortes and Moctezuma There are some interesting alternatives, or might-have-beens, to the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. Hernando (sometimes spelled Fernando) Cortes was not the first, nor even second, Spaniard to see Mexico. In 1517 Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba had discovered the Yucatan Peninsula and seen the Mayan temples and pyramids. But the Mayans did not appreciate Cordoba’s intentions to capture slaves, and they handed him a disastrous defeat and mortal wounds. Cordoba survived long enough to return to Cuba with a quantity of gold that only encouraged Diego de Velasquez, the governor of Cuba, to send another expedition. Juan de Grijalva, a kinsman of the governor, headed the expedition. He followed Cordoba’s route from Yucatan along the coast until he met one of Moctezuma’s officials, a tax collector named Pinotl. The Spaniards traded green beads for Indian gold (students should note that at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, visitors scramble madly for the bead necklaces tossed at them in the nightly Mardi Gras parade, an activity that tells us something is worth the value we place on it). Recognizing that the Aztecs were a wealthy kingdom, Grijalva sent word back to Cuba that he had successfully bartered for gold and requested permission to start a colony. Governor Velasquez was already planning another expedition, and the gold he received from Grijalva only intensified his intentions. But he passed over the somewhat cautious Grijalva as the leader of the new expedition and instead assigned the task to Hernando Cortes, who had been active in the Caribbean since 1504. Velasquez, in rejecting Grijalva for the ambitious Cortes, had no idea what effect his choice would have on history. Had Grijalva headed the expedition, it is possible that contact 37 with the Aztecs would have proceeded much more slowly, with trade relationships established between Aztec and Spaniard not unlike what the Portuguese were doing with African kingdoms. What happened under Cortes, however, was conquest. Velasquez came to distrust Cortes’s ambitions, but his second thoughts about him came too late. In February 1519 Cortes sailed to Cuba with 600 men under his command and a somewhat vague and imperfect authorization to conquer the native peoples and colonize the region for Spain. Good luck played an important part in helping Cortes achieve these goals. Stopping at the island of Cozumel, Cortes picked up a Spanish castaway, Jeronimo de Aguilar, who had been marooned after his ship sank around 1511. Living among the Maya for the past eight years, he had learned their language. Next Cortes skirmished with Indians on the Tabasco coast and, when hostilities ended with a Spanish victory, he obtained a Mexican girl, Malinche. Cortes named her Marina and made her his interpreter and mistress. For a time Aguilar and Malinche provided translations in the effort to communicate with Aztec envoys. Cortes would say something in Spanish to Aguilar who would repeat it in Mayan to Malinche, who then said the message in Nahuatl to the Aztec. The response then came along the line. Malinche quickly showed a talent for languages and soon was fluent in Spanish. This eliminated Aguilar from the lineup and increased Malinche’s importance to Cortes as a direct translator between Spaniard and Aztec. By April Cortes was in the harbor where he would found the town of Vera Cruz, a settlement that actually violated and exceeded Velasquez’s orders. Instead of a trade relationship, Cortes and his men determined to go all-out for conquest. The creation of Vera Cruz was really a ploy by which Cortes could claim on a legal technicality that he was now captain general of an expedition to conquer and colonize. Aztec officials tried to buy him off with precious gifts, but Cortes refused to be satisfied with rubber sandals, turquoise mirrors, and jewelry. He wanted gold. Still in awe of Cortes as a possible god, the Aztecs brought more gold. Cortes impressed them by firing a cannon and showing them his ferocious mastiff war dogs. 38 Cortes quickly learned about the dissatisfaction of the tribes around Lake Texcoco. He defeated the Tlaxcalans in a battle and then convinced them to join him in an alliance against the Aztecs, as he did with other tribes. Moctezuma, hearing of Cortes’s advance towards Tenochtitlan, was by turns indecisive and determined to resist. Trapped by his beliefs, he tried to appease Cortes with gifts in the hope that Cortes would not come to the Aztec capital, not realizing that his naïve bribes only whetted Cortes’s appetite for more gold. At last came their historic meeting. Almost immediately afterward, the Spaniards kidnaped the emperor and held him as a hostage. Cortes’s luck held when he outwitted an expedition sent by Velasquez to arrest him. While he was gone from Tenochtitlan, his lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado, became suspicious of Aztec activities and massacred thousands of Aztec nobles and warriors during a religious celebration. When Cortes returned to Tenochtitlan, he found the Spaniards in a state of siege. The Aztec leaders deposed Moctezuma, and when the emperor tried to speak to his people, they stoned him. Broken in heart and body, Moctezuma died. Cortes had little choice but to attempt an escape from the city. The Aztecs, previously in awe of the Spaniards and their horses and war dogs, fought ferociously on the causeways connecting the city to the mainland. A third of Cortes’s men and many of his Indian allies died making the effort. Cortes is said to have wept for the losses of his men under El arbol de la noche triste (the tree of the sad night). Cortes soon obtained reinforcements from Cuba and additional thousands of Indians who were eager to topple the Aztecs. Now it was Cortes who began a major siege in April 1521. By August many Aztecs were sick, dying, or dead from European diseases, mainly smallpox, and starvation. Cortes utterly destroyed Tenochtitlan and on its ruins began the construction of Mexico City. Over time most of Lake Texcoco would be drained. Some Aztecs managed to escape from the disaster and took the idol of Huitzilopochtli with them to northern Mexico where they hid it in a cave. The idol has never been found. 39 Pizarro in Peru If Cortes had more exhibited the character of a politician than an explorer, Francisco Pizarro should be considered a gangster. A native of Extremadura Province in Spain, Pizarro had spent some twenty years in exploring and exploiting in the New World. He was the leader of four brothers and in partnership with another conquistador, Diego de Almagro. This group was involved in subduing Indians in Central America. Around the time that Cortes was confronting Moctezuma, another conquistador, Pedrarias Davila, was exploring the possibilities of Panama. Hearing reports of gold in a land south along the Pacific Coast called “Biru,” Davila recruited Francisco Pizarro to sail southward to confirm the tales of gold. Pizarro, Almagro, and a third partner sailed from Panama in 1524 and 1526 and learned that indeed a kingdom to the south possessed large amounts of gold and silver. Authorized by King Carlos I and with the title of captain general (and a contract), Pizarro proceeded south in December 1531, minus an angry Almagro who had not shared in the contract’s allotment of promised rewards. Pizarro reached the Peruvian coast early in 1532, accompanied by around 200 men and a hundred horses. There the Spaniards learned of the Incas and, perhaps more important, that the Inca Empire was embroiled in a civil war. In 1526 Huayna-Capac, ruler of the Inca Empire, had died, possibly from malaria or smallpox. If this were the case, then it marked the rapid advance of contagious European diseases that ran well ahead of the physical presence of the Europeans and was an indication of the virulence of those diseases. Huayna-Capac left many sons and daughters, but his son Huascar was supposed to inherit the throne. Atahualpa, Huascar’s half-brother, disputed the claim, and a war broke out. Huascar was eventually defeated and executed by Atahualpa’s forces. Atahualpa proceeded to consolidate the empire in his favor, but other brothers were potential rivals to the throne, and subject tribes were unhappy with the political situation. 40 The Inca (the word applied to the people and also to the ruler) was at the top of a pyramid structure medieval in nature, the lower classes owing tribute to the higher. Its society was similar to the Aztec-sedentary, large cities, a ruling class dominating subject peoples. The allpowerful Inca emperor had many wives and concubines. Everything he did was carefully preserved, from his nail clippings to his bowel movements. The Inca nobility lived in palaces and wore fine clothing. Pedro Pizarro later wrote of feeling Atahualpa’s cloak “which was softer than silk. I said to him, ‘Inca. Of what is a robe as soft as this made?’ He explained that it was from the skins of vampire bats that fly by night in Puerto Viejo and Tumbez and that bite the natives.” An all-powerful, highly revered (though not believed divine) ruler; magnificence that could include the clothing made from vampire bat skins; wealth and treasure; all these and more fired the ambitions of the Pizarros and their colleagues. Like Cortes, they had stumbled across an unstable empire at an opportune moment. And they proceeded to make the most of it. The conquistadors sent a delegation to meet Atahualpa. The Inca leader, having recently dealt with his half-brother Huascar, was traveling toward the Inca capital at Cuzco when he heard about the strange white men. He agreed to meet the Spaniards at the town of Cajamarca. Atahualpa believed he had little to fear from a small force of some 200 men. Unlike Moctezuma, he did not think them divine beings. But he badly underestimated their fighting power and thought the strange animals (horses) would not fight at night. He therefore delayed his arrival until almost sunset instead of the agreed-upon noontime, unwittingly providing Pizarro with an advantage. Pizarro arrived at Cajamarca first and carefully placed his men in hidden positions. The date was November 16, 1532. When the Inca army at last showed up the town appeared deserted. Pizarro sent out Father Vicente de Valverde and an interpreter. Valverde spoke to Atahualpa about Jesus Christ and the King of Spain, none of which made any sense to the Inca emperor. Then the padre gave Atahualpa a Bible. Never having seen a book before, Atahualpa didn’t know what it was, and threw it on the ground. To Pizarro this act of sacrilege justified the surprise attack he now launched. 41 The Inca army vastly outnumbered the Spaniards, but it included large levies of farmers who served as militia rather than trained soldiers. Their weapons were mainly clubs and slings, and they had no steel armor. Their use of the bow and arrow was poor. By contrast, the Spaniards were well armed with steel weapons and motivated by certainties of purpose: by God and for gold. Within minutes the Spaniards had taken Atahualpa prisoner. They slew an estimated six thousand Incas as their leaders stood paralyzed by the capture of their emperor. The Spaniards used their horses as tanks, and their armor and steel swords made it very hard for the Incas to kill them. Use of horses against a larger enemy force has usually been very effective, especially when the enemy lacks weapons or the skill in using them; witness the cossacks riding down the peasants in Russia or, for that matter, mounted policemen in New York maintaining crowd control. Pizarro lodged Atahualpa in a large room that served as a cell. Desperate to win his freedom, and made aware of the Spanish lust for gold, the emperor offered to fill the room with gold and silver to a height of nine feet. Pizarro agreed to the deal, and soon gold objects were pouring in from all parts of the Inca Empire. At 1990 rates the value may have been some $60 million. Unfortunately for Atahualpa, Pizarro had no intention of keeping his part of the bargain. Despite being a prisoner, Atahualpa still ruled the empire and communicated with his generals. The Spaniards grew suspicious that Atahualpa was plotting for the Inca army to rescue him. Rumors grew of an approaching army that could annihilate the small Spanish force. Pizarro’s lieutenants demanded that Atahualpa be executed. Pizarro and a few others initially opposed the idea, but he went along with it. They gave Atahualpa the opportunity to accept Christianity by being baptised. He agreed and was garroted instead of being burned alive. This execution was carried out on July 26, 1533. When King Carlos I learned of the execution, he branded it as judicial murder, but he was far from Peru, and the Pizarro brothers escaped punishment. Pizarro then moved on to Cuzco, which he captured in November. As with Cortes, Pizarro made good use of disaffected Inca nobles and followers of Huascar who had no love for Atahualpa. After looting Cuzco of its gold, the Spaniards took their plunder and, along with the ransom 42 treasure, melted it all down into bullion for distribution among the soldiers. Their failure to see the gold objects as having a value far beyond gold and silver in bullion form is another measure of their medieval view of life. Francisco sent the king’s share of the gold and silver to Spain (which may have tempered Carlos’s anger about the murder of Atahualpa). News of this gold sparked great excitement among Spanish adventurers and prompted large numbers of them to go to the New World to get their share of it. Now politics predominated in Spanish dealings with the Inca. Pizarro assumed the pose of protector of the “legitimate” Inca line, which basically meant he took one brother over another. He first selected Tupac Huallpa, a brother of Huascar, but he died of an illness in October 1533. From the large number of brothers Pizarro then chose Manco Inca, and for a time things settled down. In January 1535 Pizarro founded the city of Lima on the Peruvian coast, preferring the location to Cuzco which sat at a much higher elevation. Then Almagro, Francisco’s old partner, showed up. He demanded a share of the spoils, as did other latecomers. Pizarro managed temporarily to persuade Almagro that a fortune awaited him to the south, in Chile. In 1537 Almagro went to Chile, tramping around through desert heat but finding no gold. In the meantime Manco Inca soon tired of his role as puppet ruler. He objected to humiliations the Spaniards put on him, escaped from Cuzco early in 1536, and launched a rebellion against the erstwhile Spanish rulers. The Incas besieged the Spaniards lodged at Cuzco but failed to capture the city. Manco Inca and his rebel army then retreated into the Andes Range, where he established a stronghold far from Spanish authority. At this point a disgruntled Almagro returned to Peru, and fighting broke out between the Pizarro and Almagro factions. In April 1538 Almagro lost a battle, was captured, and was executed by Hernando Pizarro. Before his death, however, Almagro had crowned yet another Inca brother, Paullu, as emperor. The opportunistic Paullu then switched to Pizarro’s side after Almagro’s death. One measure of Inca discontinuity may be the interesting statistic that Paullu had thirty known illegitimate children in addition to the sons he had sired within marriage. 43 Almagro left a son who thirsted to avenge his father. In July 1541 Almagrists cornered Francisco Pizarro and murdered him. By this time Carlos I had enough of the vicious conduct of the conquistadors in Peru. He sent Vaca de Castro, a judge, to Peru to establish rule along the lines of Spanish government. Castro sided with the surviving Pizarros (brother Juan had died in the siege of Cuzco) and condemned the younger Almagro to death. The squabbles nonetheless continued, with Spaniards battling Spaniards and the Incas breaking out in rebellion. In 1544 Viceroy Blasco Nunez Vela arrived in Peru, armed with the New Laws of the Indies-a belated attempt by the Spanish Crown to deal fairly with the Indians. The laws abolished Indian slavery, regulated tribute, and banned forced labor. Outraged by this challenge to their hard-won authority, the conquistadors, now led by Gonzalo Pizarro, revolted against the viceroy’s rule. At first Gonzalo was very successful. In a battle near the city of Quito his forces defeated and killed Viceroy Nunez Vela. For a time it seemed that Gonzalo might become the king of Peru. But he was no match for the Spanish bureaucracy. A new emissary from Spain, Pedro de la Gasca, arrived and said the New Laws were for the time being suspended. Pardons and rewards would be given to rebels who turned themselves in. Gonzalo’s army shrank, the rebellion collapsed, and Gonzalo was executed. Political problems continued in Peru until the 1570s. Not until 1569 and the arrival of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo did peace and stability come to Peru. Manco Inca and his successors continued to resist Spanish authority until 1572 when an expedition reached their mountain fortress. The last Inca emperor, Tupac Amaru, was captured and taken to Cuzco, where he was beheaded. Two centuries later a descendant of the Inca rulers, calling himself Tupac Amaru II, led a revolt against Spanish rule. Like his ancestor, this forerunner of Peruvian independence was captured and executed. Other Spanish Conquests The success of Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru led other conquistadors to search for Indian civilizations that could provide them with their own quest for gold. In 1536 Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada 44 headed an expedition up the Magdalena River in what is now Colombia. Quesada had two motives for the difficult trek: gold and finding a possible route to the Pacific Ocean, the latter quest due to the lack of knowledge about the size of the South American continent. He may have failed in the geographic goal, but he struck gold when his expedition reached the land of the Chibcha. Like the nations Pizarro and Cortes had encountered, the Chibcha lived in towns, grew crops, had a hierarchical leadership, and made ornaments from gold. The Spaniards defeated the Chibcha in battle and looted them of their gold and emeralds. They also founded a settlement, Santa Fe de Bogota, the future capital of Colombia. This third stroke of fortune inspired the conquistadors to believe the wildest stories imaginable about lost cities and golden kingdoms. To the north, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado pursued the “Seven Cities of Gold” all the way across North America to modern Kansas before turning back. In South America, the prime legend was of El Dorado, the “Golden Man,” so-called because, it was said, this chief had nothing better to do than have his body painted with gold dust, which he then proceeded to wash off in a sacred lake. Apart from the religious sacrilege, the Spaniards thought of all that gold dust thrown away. Even the English came to believe in El Dorado, most notably Sir Walter Releigh in the early 1600s. By that time Spain had staked out a claim for New Granada that encompassed Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. The boundary between New Granada and the Guianas, the territory Releigh wanted to explore in search of El Dorado, was not clearly defined. King James I of England wanted no quarrel with the Spaniards. Raleigh promised that if his expedition provoked hostilities with the Spaniards he would forfeit his head. The king accepted the deal, and off Raleigh went, extolling the “Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana,” recruiting people for his expedition with tales of lost Inca treasure as well as El Dorado. The expedition found no empire or treasure, but it did provoke the Spanish, and Raleigh, a man of honor, turned himself in and was executed. The term “El Dorado” would come to be used in gold rush communities as a symbol of fabulous but elusive wealth. Raleigh should have known better. By the early 1600s even the Spanish Empire was finding it more profitable to exploit what was already at hand rather than chase after will o’the wisps. In the 1540s, however, 45 with three major successes, the Spaniards were still pursuing whatever possibilities could make them rich. In 1539 one expedition got far more than it bargained for. Hearing of an area lush with cinnamon trees, Gonzalo Pizarro led an expedition from Quito (now the capital of Ecuador) across the Andes Range. They found a limited quantity of cinnamon, but nothing that would yield a profit. The local Indians wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Through interpreters they told the Spaniards what they wanted to hear, spinning tales about rich kingdoms somewhere to the east, anything to get them to go away. In the futile search for the nonexistent kingdoms, Francisco de Orellana, one of Pizarro’s lieutenants, went foraging with a small group of would-be conquistadors. Descending a stream, they found its current too swift to allow them to return. Down they went in two crude boats, going from one tributary connecting to a larger one, until they found themselves floating down a huge river. At one point, where the Napo River flows into the Amazon River, the party divided, Orellana leaving Sanchez de Vargas and Father Gaspar de Carvajal who had argued Orellana should try to rejoin Pizarro. Orellana said the return effort was imposible and continued down the Amazon. Sanchez and Carvajal, after enduring incredible hardships, did get back to Pizarro. The main party then struggled back to Quito, around eighty survivors out of an original group of 400. Meanwhile, Orellana kept heading downstream and eastward, sometimes fighting Indians on the banks of the river, other times enjoying their hospitality. He was somewhat amazed to find Indian women fighting alongside their men. Eventually-and after some 2,500 miles-they came out of the mouth of the river and into the Atlantic Ocean. After considerable difficulties they reached a Spanish settlement in New Granada. No gold, no kingdoms, but he had to say something about his epic trip, especially since Carvajal had denounced his decision and Pizarro considered him a traitor. Orellana reached into the by now large grab-bag of Spanish beliefs in legends and myths, and he came up with a name for the great river he had descended: the Amazon, paying tribute to those fierce Indian women. Spaniards continued to search for rich Indian kingdoms, but had to settle for much less. An ambitious effort along the Rio de la Plata saw the founding of Buenos Aires in 1536, but lack of supplies and food, and Indians who effectively fought them, soon ended the settlement. The 46 colonists moved a thousand miles upriver and founded Asuncion, now the capital of Paraguay, where the Guarani Indians were friendlier and they could cultivate crops. Buenos Aires would not be resettled until 1580. Through a combination of luck and ambition, some Spaniards had struck it rich in Mexico, Peru, and New Granada. Many more had died in these attempts, and still others would perish in fruitless expeditions to chase down imaginary kingdoms, fountains of youth, lost cities, cities of gold, golden men, Amazon women, and whatever else seemed even remotely plausible. In these efforts mortality ran high and knowledge would be acquired only with difficulty and sacrifice. Gradually the outlines of the continents and their interiors, their lakes and mountains, plains and deserts, rivers and climate, would form a body of knowledge for Europeans who would find the information more useful than tales of El Dorado. 47 For Further Reading Bernhard, Brendan. Pizarro, Orellana and the Exploration of the Amazon (1991). Hemming, John. The Conquest of the Incas (1970). Hemming, John. The Search for El Dorado (1978). Kirkpatrick, F.A. The Spanish Conquistadores (1968). Leon-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears (1992). Padden, R.C. The Hummingbird and the Hawk (1967). Stirling, Stuart. The Last Conquistador (1999). Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994). Varon, Rafael. Pizarro and His Brothers (1997). Wood, Michael. Conquistadors (2000). 48 CHAPTER 4: EXPLORING THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE The dramatic conquests of Mexico and Peru by Spain overshadow the many expeditions that ended in failure and death. Cortes and Pizarro were more like politicians and gangsters than explorers, yet they also explored territory unknown to Europeans. They knew the men who went out and never returned. It is therefore necessary to define some terms and see which men fit into the categories defined by those terms. Exploration. In its simplest sense, and to borrow from “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” the term means “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Of course, this is a Eurocentric definition, since indigenous peoples had already gone there. Motivation for exploration may include a variety of intentions, both positive and negative: greed, trade, conquest, knowledge. Conquest. Conquerors defeat the resistance of the people they meet who don’t want them to be there, much less submit to their authority. Colonization. Countries send people to the conquered or explored areas to rule over, live with, and ultimately (to some degree) merge with the conquered/colonized peoples. Settlement. Settlement provides the opportunity to create viable living places for people who want to make a new life for themselves and to bring up their children among new opportunities. Settlements may be created among conquered peoples, at the edge of a frontier beyond which the native peoples are not conquered, or within a conquered area at a place no longer threatened by reprisals from conquered people. Some of the most famous of the explorers and conquerors may fit into more than one category, and where they are placed may cause debate. Still, it helps to understand that labeling someone a “conqueror” who was actually a “colonizer” confuses a discussion about the person unless one is prepared to do more than accept a superficial description about that person. Here are some suggested categories and who might fit into them: Explorer/Discoverer: Columbus, Drake, Magellan Conqueror (conquistador): Cortes, De Soto, Pizarro, Alvarado 49 Colonizers: viceroys, people who obtained positions as major or minor government officials; the people who worked for them Settlers: the people who came from the old country to the new in search of opportunities and a better life Pioneers: the first generation of settlers in a new area Immigrants: later generations of settlers The image of Spaniards, English, French, or some other European force coming to the Western Hemisphere in strength for conquest is very inaccurate. In almost all cases, Europeans took tentative steps, endured considerable hardships, and had many fatalities. They persevered because of their ambition, determination, and greed. They unintentionally brought diseases that decimated the indigenous peoples they encountered; but they also brought plants and animals that thrived in the new lands and created an economy that is of major importance to our time. The “Age of Discovery/Exploration” is actually a series of periods since the 15th century that includes exploration, conquest, colonization, and settlement down through the 19th century, as well as a search for scientific knowledge that continues in our own time. Different areas of the world were explored at different times by different nations. Europeans explored Africa’s interior centuries after the exploration of the Western Hemisphere continents. The interior of Brazil remained largely unknown until the 20th century. As late as 1914 ex-President Theodore Roosevelt met his match in an arduous effort to trace the source of the River of Doubt in Brazil. We are taught in school that the world is round, that the earth is a planet in a solar system that is one of billions in a galaxy we call the Milky Way, and that there are billions (or millions, or trillions, whatever) of galaxies. Nevertheless, we still speak of “sunrise” and “sunset” and use such terms as “the four corners of the earth” or “to the ends of the earth” as if the earth had some shape other than spheroid. We are not that far removed from the distinctions between alchemy and chemistry, astrology and astronomy, numerology and mathematics, or, for that matter, myth, legend, and history. Students may not know that Columbus made four voyages, but they know their sign of the Zodiac. Several reasons motivated 15th-century exploration. The most obvious was wealth--exploring the unknown lands that lay between 50 Europe and the Far East and to recapture the trade the Turks had disrupted. Geographic knowledge would make the search for wealth more efficient. It would also put one nation ahead of another, since no one was about to share that knowledge with any rivals. The very existence of the Western Hemisphere prompted exploration; well into the 16th century, Europeans, led by Spain, believed the Americas an obstacle to the wealth of the Far East. Once the wealth of the Americas was recognized, it promoted exploration to find areas there that would yield it. For the initial age of exploration, an ocean voyage itself was the first peril. Prior to 1492, the accepted mode of travel was to keep an eye on the coastline. Columbus’s trans-Atlantic crossing involved new challenges. Extensive time at sea seemed to cause a baffling disease, scurvy, which debilitated sailors and eventually killed them. Long after the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables to combat scurvy became known, explorers still suffered from the disease through stubborn persistence in ignoring its warning signs: the teeth fell out, gums blackened, muscles ached, and energy left the body, and then death. Vitamin C was not discovered until the early 20th century. The open sea presented other frightful perils, especially in the north Atlantic where severe storms smashed wooden sailing ships like matchsticks. Boreworms loved to eat their way into wooden hulls until the ships became unseaworthy (a euphemism for the fact that such ships would sink); plating hulls with copper or iron finally solved the problem. As for navigation instruments, to go anywhere required knowledge of position and direction-where one was and where one was going. This wasn’t easy to calculate on the open sea. European seamen had the magnetic compass that told them where north was, but nothing about where they were. Celestial navigation-figuring out one’s location by sun, moon, or stars-was a complicated mathematical process that often as not was inaccurate. The quadrant, a device used for measuring an angle off a circle, offered some help, as did an astrolabe, an instrument that in various versions dated to the ancient Greeks. Apart from mathematical errors, celestial navigation was vulnerable to clouds, fog, rain, mist, and haze, all or any of which rendered instruments useless. In the 16th century Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594) developed his Mercator projection system of putting a globe on a flat surface, an idea that 51 with variations in projection is still widely used, as in classroom wall maps. The sextant, developed in 1730, was useful for latitude and longitude by measuring altitudes of celestial bodies. The main problem for navigation was calculating longitude-the meridian, vertical lines on the map (horizontal, latitude lines are called parallels). 15th-century instruments could figure out latitude, but longitude calculations involved complex mathematical formulas that took hours to work out and were subject to error. For longitude, the challenge was to combine time and distance to pinpoint location. The math is simple enough. The earth is round, and its circumference is a circle. A circle has 360 degrees. There are 24 hours in a day, so if you divided 360 by 24 you get 15 degrees for each hour of travel. With the circumference of the earth a known distance of about 24,000 miles, 15 degrees is about 960 miles. Divide each degree into 60 “geographic” minutes and you get about 16 miles to a minute. Divide the minute into 60 seconds, and your location is calculated to about ¼ mile. So theoretically a correct calculation of longitude can bring you within a quarter mile of where you are, or knowing where you want to go. Unfortunately, no clock of the time was consistently accurate. A few seconds’ discrepancy could put a ship miles off course and on the rocks (which wrecked shps and took lives). Inventor John Harrison spent decades perfecting the world’s first chronometer, finally approved by Parliament in 1761. Harrison had to deal with humidity, breakable springs, keeping the device level, and other complications, but he did it, and he did so despite the conservative views of the British Navy and stubborn scientists who preferred celestial navigation. From Harrison’s invention we also have modern time zones based on the Prime Meridian in Grenwich, England, which is zero degrees longitude, from which the world is divided into 24 time zones. The very idea of the earth being measured by degrees challenged the best thinkers of the Age of Discovery. Italian author Umberto Eco, in his novel The Island of the Day Before, describes the conundrum that plagued the ideas of time and distance: a ship sails down the coast of Africa, then east through the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific. If it goes far enough, it crosses what we today call the International Dateline. Does the ship go backward in time? Does a ship sailing westward from Europe 52 lose a day? Where does the day go? To use a modern example, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” said President Franklin Roosevelt. But in Japan, on the other side of the Dateline, the date was December 8. Then there was the case of the “lost” Solomon Islands. In 1568 Alvaro de Mendaria de Negra, sailing for Spain, found a group of islands in the South Pacific. Believing the area wealthy, he named the islands after King Solomon in the Old Testament, and reported his find when he returned to Spain. Other explorers, however, couldn’t find the islands because without knowledge of their longitude, they were impossible to locate. Eventually Mendaria’s report became legendary and unbelieved. Not until 1768-200 years later-did a French expedition under Louis de Bougainville rediscover the Solomon Islands. Beyond the problems of calculating latitude and longitude, voyages of exploration often had to deal with unreliable crews. Merchants, investors, and governments considered the ordinary seamen a necessary evil, largely uneducated, and superstitious. The captain’s rule was absolute because mutiny was such a serious crime. Sailors knew that on a protracted voyage it was certain there would be a high rate of illness and large loss of life. If sailors were unreliable, what about the reception the explorers would get on meeting the peoples of an unknown land? Not every landfall had docile natives who could be easily conquered as Columbus had done. The Caribs used poison darts and ambushes, and they practiced ritual cannibalism on their captives. When Magellan encountered the Marianas Islands, he named them the Ladrones (Spanish for thieves) because, he claimed, they stole whatever the Spaniards hadn’t nailed down. Yet another problem for explorers was the reliability of their maps. Columbus’s first voyage baffled European mapmakers and mathematicians. How could he have reached Asia and returned in so short a time? Even as realization slowly grew that Columbus hadn’t done so, mapmakers still distorted world maps to reconcile his claims. They stretched China far to the east and blended it with North America so that “Cathay” was just northwest of Florida. Since countries acquiring hard facts had no inclination to share the details with others, geographical errors 53 persisted, causing hardship and death for those who had to find things out the hard way. Eurocentric maps perpetuated mistakes that complicated the planning for new expeditions. One of the most notorious instances of persistent error was the view that California was an island. This error, popularized early in the 17th century, overturned the earlier correct view. From the 1620s to as late as 1740 California baffled anyone who looked at European maps published during that period: sometimes an island, sometimes a peninsula. Regardless of what on-site explorers and colonists said, European cartographers still reprinted the old mistakes. European mapmakers hated to see large blank spots on their maps, so they filled them in with mountains, lakes, and rivers. In their defense the mapmakers claimed they were only doing what explorers expected them to do, since explorers believed that certain topographical features were out there, as well as Atlantis, Shangri-La, the Strait of Anian, the Kingdom of Prester John, and other fanciful creations. Ship pilots and navigators, who only recorded what they observed, made the best maps, but such information was not marketable to the public unless the cartographer filled in the empty spaces. Additionally, countries tended to exaggerate their own territorial claims on maps, invariably at the expense of rival claimants. Disagreement over boundaries could lead either to treaties or wars to settle the matter. Students need to be aware that historical atlases are misleading as well because they impose modern geographic outlines on historic events instead of the way explorers saw the terrain-incomplete, vague, and often inaccurate. Magellan’s Voyage Students will often report that in the third or fourth grade they learned that Columbus discovered America “because he wanted to prove the world was round.” The statement offers an interesting non sequitur. Whether Columbus discovered, encountered, or ran into America is not relevant to whether “he proved the world is round,” because he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, not all the way around the planet. The first true circumnavigation of the world occurred between 1519 and 1521, by 54 Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer in the service of Spain. Unlike Columbus, Magellan had been to Asia, sailing around Africa to the Moluccas and Spice Islands (now the area of Indonesia and Singapore). Disagreement over finances with King Emanuel of Portugal brought Magellan to Spain in 1517. He proposed a voyage to the “real” Indies by sailing around the largely unknown mass of South America and west to the Moluccas. This interesting idea would put him into competition with the Portuguese whose contact with the Far East was around Africa. In effect, Magellan proposed to do for Spain what Columbus had promised but not done-sail west to China. The Western Hemisphere was but an obstacle to the main goal. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail with five ships, reaching South America in November. By 1520 the little fleet was exploring the Rio de la Plata and the possibility, soon disavowed, that it might lead to the South Sea (recently noted by Vasco Nunez de Balboa at Panama), better known today as the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was then stuck in bad weather at Port San Julian, a lonely outpost, for six months. A ship was wrecked; a mutiny broke out. Magellan then led the four remaining ships into the Strait of Magellan; the trip took 38 days to cover only 330 miles, a most difficult passage because of contrary winds and storms. They finally sailed out of the strait into a vast ocean so calm that Magellan named it the “Pacific,” on November 28, 1520. Now came the long voyage across the Pacific Ocean and a growing sense of the extent to which water covered the planet. On March 6, 1521, Magellan arrived at the Marianas Islands, and on April 7 he reached Cebu in the Philippines. Magellan made the fateful decision of siding with one local ruler against another and on April 27, 1521, he was killed while trying to impose the Catholic religion on a rival chief. Juan Sebastian del Cano, the second in command, went around Africa and reached Seville on September 6, 1522. Of the original 265 crew members, only 35 made it back, and only one ship, the Victoria, remained of the original five. But the Victoria brought a cargo of spices that paid the expenses of the expedition. Magellan’s voyage proved of tremendous significance to explorers and cartographers. Discarded was Ptolemy’s perception that the earth was mostly land; now it was realized the ratio was reversed. People believed 55 the southern part of the Strait of Magellan was connected to Antarctica, and for the next century they would cross from Atlantic to Pacific through the dangerous passage (Francis Drake would make a notable voyage through it fifty years after Magellan). Not until the early 17th century would Dutch seamen show it was easier to go around Cape Horn. Spain decided the Strait of Magellan was not a practical route to the East Indies and sold its Moluccan interests to Portugal. But forty years after Magellan’s voyage, Spain colonized the Philippines, naming the islands after King Philip II, and made it an important trade center for Spain in Asia. So Magellan gets the credit for “proving the world was round” since at the time of his death he had completed a full circle of his travels, if one counts his earlier visit to the Far East by way going around Africa. Spain also occupied the strategic island of Guam, formally annexing Magellan’s discovery in 1565. Any dispute between Spain and Portugal over these claims ended in 1580 for the time being as the Portuguese royal line died out and Philip II became the ruler of both countries, a situation that would continue until 1640. Spain held the Magellan discoveries for more than 300 years. After the Spanish-American War in 1898 Guam and the Philippines became United States territories. Colonization of the Philippines also set up a trade connection between the Philippines and Mexico. In 1565 Andres Urdaneta made the round trip from Acapulco to Manila and back in 129 days. On the return voyage Urdaneta found westerly winds in the north Pacific and created a feasible trade route between Asia and the Western Hemisphere. The Search for the Northwest Passage Another fateful consequence of Magellan’s expedition stemmed from a belief of the time that geography was symmetrical: since Magellan had found a southwest passage around or through South America, it seemed reasonable to geographers of the 16th century that a “northwest passage” must provide a way past the North American continent. From the late 16th century well into the 19th century, one expedition after another sailed to the Arctic, usually to suffer terrible hardships or to meet an unpleasant end. 56 Two Englishmen contributed greatly to the misunderstanding of the Arctic region. Humphrey Gilbert obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1578 to plant a colony in the area of Newfoundland, in northeastern Canada. With financial backing, Gilbert sailed across the Atlantic, only to experience one mishap after another. Spaniards stopped his first effort. In 1583 he led a fleet of five ships to Newfoundland and managed to start a colony at St. John’s on Newfoundland. It failed to prosper and was soon abandoned. Gilbert himself died when his ship sank during a storm. Martin Frobisher penetrated further north, seeking the Northwest Passage. He made it as far as the eastern tip of Hall Island (named for a later explorer) and claimed it for England. He also pioneered in navigating Frobisher Strait, though a glance at a modern map reveals this was only a beginning in attempting a passage. Frobisher Strait turned out to be an inlet as explorer Charles Francis Hall discovered in 1861. Frobisher’s biggest problem was his willingness to believe what he thought he saw. On his three voyages between 1576 and 1578, he claimed that a navigable passage existed to the Pacific Ocean. More to the point, to attract exploiters to the area, he claimed to have found “ore” that contained gold. He brought back some 200 tons of this ore on his second voyage. It turned out that the “ore” consisted of iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, but the seeds of avarice had been planted. Later explorers would often risk their lives for more than acquiring geographical knowledge. Another Englishman, Henry Hudson, believed Frobisher’s stories about the Northwest Passage and in 1607 persuaded the Muscovy Company of England that he could reach Cathay by going straight across the top of the world. He managed to reach 80 degrees North but had to turn back because his ship was in poor condition. In 1608 Hudson tried again to reach China, this time going east above Russia. The ice again defeated him. At this point the Muscovy Company gave up. Hudson found employment with Dutch entrepreneurs and explored today’s New York Harbor, giving his name to the Hudson River and laying groundwork for the founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam a few years later. In 1609 Hudson again tried to make the Northwest Passage, this time backed by some English merchants. Hudson made it into the huge bay that 57 bears his name, but that was as far as he got. A mutinous crew put him and a few others ashore and left them there. His exact end is unknown. In 1619 Jens Munk of Denmark attempted the Northwest Passage. His effort was done in by scurvy that killed 61 of the 64 men in the crew. Survivor Monk’s description of the effects of scurvy bears quoting: As regards the symptoms of the illness which had fallen upon us, it was a rare and extraordinary one. All the limbs and joints were so miserably drawn together, with great pains in the loins, as if a thousand knives were thrust through them. The body, at the same time, was blue and brown as when one gets a black eye; and the whole body was quite powerless. The mouth also was in a very bad and miserable condition, as all the teeth were loose and we could not eat any victuals. After Munk, more English and French explorers tried their luck, far into the 19th century. Bit by bit the Arctic map was filled in, often with names of explorers who died in their attempt. Much of this effort was based on a fallacious belief in the Open Polar Sea, also called the Paleocrystic Sea, an allegedly ice-free sea north of the polar pack. If a ship could penetrate the pack, it could go to the Pacific. Such geographic fantasies sparked the imaginations of writers such as Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, but they could and did prove deadly to any explorer who believed in them. The worst disaster in Arctic exploration was to the Franklin expedition of 1845, in which all 129 men perished-a fact not known until many years later and with the subsequent loss of life to many explorers who went in search of them. By the 1870s the impossibility and nonexistence of a practical Northwest Passage was finally evident. The Arctic Ocean could have straits that were free of ice one year and blocked the next. Once this was realized, attention shifted to trying to be the first to reach the North Pole, 90 degrees North, the top of the world. This achievement may or may not have been done by Robert Peary in 1909, and controversy about his claims continues to this day. 20th-century explorations include the illfated effort of the dirigible Italia in the late 1920s. Finally, in July 1954 a Royal Canadian ship, the HMCS Labrador, made the Northwest Passage. The 58 ship was equipped with 12,000 horsepower diesel electric motors. The following year, the U.S. atomic submarine Nautilus made the crossing under the ice. A few individuals have since reached the North Pole, one using a snowmobile, but these hardy adventurers were helicoptered out after their achievement, making unnecessary the arduous and dangerous trip back over ice to their starting point. Spanish Explorations in the 16th Century In the early 16th century Spanish explorers did a lot of island- and coastal-hopping in the Caribbean area. Those who survived gained experience and an increased desire for gold. The medieval fixation on gold for its own sake would cost the Spaniards dearly as other nations developed a more sophisticated understanding of the economics of world trade. Among the unfortunate explorers who did not live to tell the tale were Ponce de Leon, who made two trips to Florida, 1513 and 1521, in search of a legendary “Fountain of Youth.” All he found were alligators and poisonous snakes, and he died in his second attempt to reach his illusive goal. Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and, facing southerly, named the vast ocean he saw the South Sea. Alas for Balboa, his political rivals arrested him on trumped-up charges and executed him. In 1528 Panfilo de Narvaez attempted to set up a colony along the Gulf Coast of Florida but only succeeded in losing the lives of almost all of the 600 men who had accompanied him. The untimely ends of Ponce de Leon, Balboa, and Narvaez are only representations of hundreds more who went on entradas-expeditions to unknown areas-who never returned or else came back with little to show for their efforts. Still, the Spaniards persisted in their belief that Fortune’s Wheel might yet turn in their favor as it had done for Cortes and Pizarro (conveniently forgetting that many men under their leadership had died). The opportunity for riches that seemed to be out there next arose from the arrival of a most unexpected and unusual explorer-Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. De Vaca was one of the few survivors of the disastrous Narvaez expedition. With three other companions, one of them an African slave named Estevanico, de Vaca spent some seven years trying to get back to a 59 Spanish settlement. He traveled through what is today Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas before coming to Mexico. At times the four men were prisoners of an Indian tribe, other times treated as shamans (medicine men). When at last they contacted Spaniards they were hardly recognizable as European Christians-clad in a few rags, skin darkened from the sun, hair matted. The Spaniards were “dumbfounded at the sight of me, strangely dressed and in company with Indians,” said de Vaca. “They just stood there staring for a long time.” De Vaca had endured a terrible school of experience to learn just how little his compatriots knew of the North American continent. Stories had been circulating of the “Seven Cities of Gold,” including a town, Cibola, with walls of gold. De Vaca doubted the existence of these cities, but young and ambitious men believed what they wanted to hear, and they didn’t want to hear de Vaca’s observations on what the unknown lands were really like. Shortly before de Vaca returned to New Spain, the first viceroy to govern the territory, Antonio de Mendoza, arrived at Mexico City. Mendoza was a very competent and politically savvy official who knew how to deal with conquistadors who cared little for bureaucracies and outside rule. He sent Pedro de Alvarado down to Guatemala to put down an Indian uprising. When Alvarado was killed, Mendoza claimed ownership of Alvarado’s small fleet of ships on the Pacific side of Mexico. Around this time Hernando Cortes had sent a ship across the Gulf of California (also called the Sea of Cortes) to confirm reports of an island. The island turned out to be an extension of a peninsula, and news of this geographic discovery aroused considerable excitement. Many Spaniards had either read (or had read to them) a novel first published in 1510, Las Sergas de Esplandian, by Garci Ordonez de Montalvo. The story was a potboiler of crusaders fighting Muslims, but one chapter described a land called California, ruled by Queen Califia and her Amazon women. Word soon spread that the island to the west was the “island of California,” and Corte and his followers wanted very much to repeat their Aztec conquest and gain new victories. Viceroy Mendoza, however, had other plans. He wanted to bring order and stability to New Spain. Inevitably Cortes and Mendoza clashed. Cortes made a strategic error in leaving Mexico for Spain, and he never returned. Mendoza had no 60 other serious challengers to his authority, and it would be left to him to order expeditions to “California” and the “Seven Cities of Gold.” Mendoza was not about to send anyone hither and yon without making careful plans. The tale of the Seven Cities of Gold would have to be first verified before money would be spent on a possible wild goose chase. He nominated two people to lead a small entrada northward to confirm or deny the existence of golden cities. A priest, Fray Marcos de Niza, agreed to go. The other person drafted for the trek was the slave Estevanico, who appears not to have had much choice in the matter. Along with Indian servants, in 1539 the party proceeded northward, heading towards the pueblo cities of the upper Rio Grande. The priest was not physically up to the rigors of the long trek, and Estevanico found Fray Marcos lagging behind. They worked out an agreement whereby Estevanico would send an Indian back with a cross made of sticks; a small cross meant nothing of importance; a large one meant to come at once. When an Indian returned with a large cross, Fray Marcos hurried as best he could to the vicinity of a pueblo. There he learned to his dismay that hostile Indians had killed Estevanico. Not daring to go any further, the priest tried to make out the outlines of the distant pueblo. Believing what he (and what the Spaniards back in Mexico) wanted to believe, he thought he saw walls of gold on the pueblo buildings. And, returning to Mexico City, he reported this to Viceroy Mendoza. The story created great excitement, everyone wanting to go and share in the riches. Cabeza de Vaca was not present to hear Fray Marcos’s report, having returned to Spain, but had he heard it he would almost certainly have dismissed it as nonsense. Not so Mendoza who proceeded to organize not one but several expeditions to be conducted simultaneously. Two sea voyages were made, utilizing the late Alvarado’s ships. In 1539 Francisco de Ulloa sailed up the Gulf of California and rounded the Baja Peninsula, pronouncing the region a peninsula instead of an island. Anyone wishing to explore the Pacific coast would therefore waste considerable time and resources if they sailed up the gulf east of Baja. More than sixty years later, this correct view was reversed, creating the “island of California” myth that would persist well into the 18th century. Another voyager, Hernando de Alarcon, sailed up the gulf and made it to the mouth of the Colorado River, possibly as far as present-day Yuma, 61 Arizona. Alarcon did not succeed in making a connection with the main overland expedition led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. With pageantry and glamour, 300 soldiers, a thousand Tlaxcalan Indian auxiliaries, servants, and slaves, with horses, pack animals, livestock, and armaments, set out in 1540 for the Seven Cities of Gold. By July the Coronado expedition had reached Hawikuh, the Zuni pueblo where Estevanico had met his end (the Zuni told Coronado through interpreters that Estevanico had acted inappropriately toward their women). When the Zuni refused to “acknowledge the Church as the ruler and superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen,” the Spaniards attacked them and, with superior arms, took over the pueblo. But the walls were made of adobe, not gold. Coronado nonetheless decided to continue the quest. He sent out parties to explore the region. One came across the Grand Canyon, others ranged through Arizona and New Mexico. The Spaniards found an Indian slave they named “the Turk” who claimed he knew of a golden city and how to get there, but what he really wanted was to get away from his captors and back to his own people. The Turk led Coronado on a chase clear up to Kansas and the Quivira Indians who most obviously did not live in a golden city. Coronado continued searching until it was quite obvious there would be no riches found. He ordered the Turk strangled for his duplicity. On the way back, a horse accidentally kicked Coronado on the head, and he never fully recovered from the injury. On returning to New Spain, Coronado was put on trial for various charges, including his Indian policies and why he continued searching for Cibola after it was found to be a false story. He was eventually found guilty of artocities against the Indians but continued to work for the municipal government until his death in 1554. Others were not so lucky. Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, a lieutenant on the expedition, made the mistake of returning to Spain where he was charged with the "mismanagement" of the expedition and did some prison time. The Coronado expedition stands as a magnificent failure. It made the Spanish government aware of the immensity of the land it claimed. Sixty years later a colonizing effort would be made in New Mexico and, while successful, it was a tenuous hold on a far-off and often hostile 62 frontier. Although it was becoming obvious there was no easy Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the Strait of Anian was a fable, men would continue to search for these elusive goals. The belief in a “River to the West” across North America lasted well into the 19th century. Two other expeditions are of note at this time. Mendoza sponsored the voyage of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who set sail on June 27, 1542, up the west coast of Baja California north along the Pacific coast of the continent. He made many stops along the way, naming capes and points and other geographic features. He saw and named what is today called San Diego Bay (almost all of his names were replaced by later explorers). Cabrillo may have gone as far north as Cape Mendocino but missed Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay. On the voyage he was injured and shortly afterward died of its complications. Spain did nothing with his report and claims made by the expedition, and some sixty years passed before another major coastal expedition was attempted. Unconnected with any of the Mendoza expeditions was the campaign led by Hernando de Soto, another private venture to conquer Florida. De Soto set out in 1539 and literally trampled through the southeastern part of North America from Florida to the Mississippi River, meeting any Indian resistance with excessive violence. Of interest is the fact that de Soto encountered empty villages that modern researchers conclude were depopulated by European diseases that had spread in advance of the invaders. De Soto himself became fatally ill. His men weighted down his body and dumped it in the Mississippi River, fearing (probably rightly) that angry Indians would desecrate a grave. The expedition’s survivors made it to Mexico, the whole effort a costly failure. The Spaniards learned harsh lessons from the efforts to penetrate the North American continent. It seemed a barren region with hostile Indians and no gold. Mythic geography still found no basis in reality, though stories of the Northwest Passage, the River to the West, and other tales still tantalized them. In the 19th century, Americans for a time would look at the Great Salt Lake and search for a possible outlet to the Pacific Ocean. After the Coronado failure Spain learned its lesson and found more profit in consolidating what was already discovered or conquered, and plenty remained to be done in this respect. The 1540s saw major 63 mining discoveries in both Mexico and Peru; risky expeditions seemed of secondary importance. 64 FOR FURTHER READING Bolton, Herbert E. Coronado, Knight of Pueblo and Plains (1949). Crosby, Alfred. The Columbian Exchange (1972). De Voto, Bernard. The Course of Empire (1952). Hennessy, Alistair. The Frontier in Latin American History (1978). Kelsey, Harry. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (1986). Lamb, Harold. New Found Land (1955). Parr, Charles McK. Ferdinand Magellan, Circumnavigator (1964). Sobel, Dava. Longitude (1995). Terrell, John U. Estevanico the Black (1968). Wilson, Derek. The World Encompassed: Francis Drake and His Great Voyage (1977). 65 CHAPTER 5: HISPANIC SOCIETY IN A NEW WORLD How the Conquest was Possible How could a few hundred men topple several million people organized into warlike kingdoms? The question may seem perplexing, but in hindsight the reasons seem clear enough. Spaniards had no elaborate military training and, though usually called soldiers, were really just armed men, their status defined by some civil position. They brought with them technological and psychological advantages, however, that overpowered the Aztec and Inca leaders. First and foremost was steel: not necessarily the firearms of the 16th century, but steel swords, helmets, and plated armor. Guns made a loud noise, and cannon could be destructive in a siege. But in close combat Spanish weaponry outmatched the weapons of the Indians who had no metal weapons. The Spaniards also had trained mastiffs, war dogs, large and frightening beasts against which there was no New World counterpart. The Spaniards also had horses. This gave them speed and mobility, and trained horses were as effective in their way as modern mobile military vehicles. Horsemen with lances could split up large Indian armies. On flat ground, fewer than 200 Spanish horsemen reinforced by foot soldiers could be effective against any number of Indians. Horses had been extinct in the Western Hemisphere for some 40,000 years or more; the Indians had never seen anything like them. Although the Indian belief that man and horse were one beast is probably exaggerated and at most was an initial impression, the Indians found it very difficult to fight against mounted horsemen. Spanish horsemen were as effective in their time as Cossacks, cavalry, and mounted police would be in theirs. Along with the technological advantages, Spaniards had a psychological edge. Aggressive and individualistic, they believed in the superiority of their culture and religion. Outraged by the evidence of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, they drew immediate conclusions about Aztec culture. Thus they saw nothing worthwhile about Aztec 66 language, culture, or social customs, and they carried this contempt to other Indian societies. On the other side, Moctezuma and the Aztecs believed in their own myths and tried to equate them with the Spaniards. By a most lucky coincidence for the Spaniards, they arrived during a crucial year in the Aztec calendar, further confusing native thinking about these strange aliens. The Incas suffered a different miscalculation: Atahualpa underestimated the small number of foreign invaders and what they were capable of doing. In other areas of the New World, conquest proved far more difficult. Toppling the Aztec and Inca empires was as much a political act as it was a military one. Areas with less structured societies fought harder and resisted better, as Spaniards learned from disastrous expeditions to the southeastern part of North America, Central America, and interior areas of South America. Not until the 19th century would European advances in weapons technology, such as repeating rifles, provide them with the same level of superiority that Spaniards had against the Aztecs and Incas in the 16th century. Justifying the Conquest From the very beginning the rulers of Spain were concerned over just who were the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, a concern that grew as did the realization that Columbus had not reached Asia but had stumbled across two previously unknown continents. Indians seemed a race apart from the known European, African, and Asian peoples. Were they rational beings or barbarians? Pagans, or possibly relapsed infidels? Aristotle, dead in his grave for the past eighteen hundred years, still influenced European thought. He had claimed that some peoples were slaves by nature. Were these Indians slaves or free beings? What was the responsibility of the Catholic Church to bring the True Faith to them? These questions were important, for their answers would be used to justify any policies the Spaniards formulated for the Indians. Spaniards needed to know if Indians would pay them tribute. Would the Indians keep their lands, or would Spain take them over? It was common at the time to brand slaves. Could this be lawfully done? Meanwhile, the Church had questions of its own. Should Indians be converted, baptised, 67 instructed in Latin, and learn the European versions of writing and mathematics (the Europeans showed almost no inclination to decipher indigenous pictographic writing or comprehend Aztec, Mayan, or other systems of mathematics)? New World astronomy was ignored in a time when European monarchs had court astrologers, and the Church believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Well before Cortes invaded the Mexican mainland, Spanish leaders were pondering these and other questions. On the island of Hispanola, Father Antonio de Montesinos had no doubt as to the identity of the Indians. They were rational beings, and to make war against them for no purpose other than conquest was morally wrong. In 1511 he railed against the Spaniards for what they had done to the native inhabitants on Hispanola. Few colonizers agreed with him, though one, Bartolome de las Casas, was so struck by Montesinos’s message that he abandoned the material world, became a Dominican priest, and spent his life working for the welfare of the Indians. King Ferdinand heard the arguments, which the Dominicans pointed out could be quite serious if Spain were committing offenses against God. The king and his advisers worked out a solution, the Laws of Burgos (1512-1513). This was tepid legislation that did little more than try to justify what the Spaniards were doing. The Dominicans wanted more, for they questioned whether Spain’s conquest of the Indies was even legal. The advisers then came up with the Requerimiento. This document gave the European version of the history of the world, claimed the supremacy of Spain over the New World and the rights granted to Spain by Pope Alexander VI, and warned that failure to acknowledge the rights of Spain or to accept Christianity could result in a war of punishment or enslavement against the Indians. It didn’t seem like much of a legal justification, but the way the conquistadors used it made it even less. Las Casas read the document and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Spanish captains on exploratory expeditions would shout it in Spanish to uncomprehending, fleeing Indians. Or, finding themselves in a deserted village, read it anyway. The document ignored the fact that no Indian would be able to understand it unless it was translated into his language. Its authors didn’t mention 68 where or how an interpreter could be found who was proficient in Spanish and one of the numerous languages spoken by peoples yet to be met. Ideally, Spanish colonists might come to the Americas and coexist with the Indians who would learn European farming skills and be converted to Catholicism. Several experiments were actually conducted to see if such coexistence was possible. Jeronymite friars made the effort on Hispanola between 1516 and 1520; Cuba was the testing ground between 1525 and 1535. All such efforts failed. Bringing Indians together in close quarters as villagers prompted almost all of them to succumb to European diseases. Spanish colonists wanted to exploit Indian labor and wrangled with the priests over who was to control them. Local officials invariably sided with the colonists. After some thirty years of experimentation, attempts to transform Indians into Castilian Christian farmers and laborers were unsuccessful. In the meantime, events such as the conquest of the Aztecs had opened up huge new worlds of Indians and riches. Social experiments gave way for the time being to aggressive conquest. Spoils for the Victor Following the initial conquest of Indians on Hispanola, the Spanish Crown adopted the encomienda system to reward the conquistadores. The encomienda originated during the Middle Ages as a system of granting control over the lands and people captured in the wars against the Muslims. Adopting the practice to the New World, a conquistador who was awarded an encomienda grant received a group of Indians who owed him tribute and labor. The encomendero, as the receiver of the grant was called, assumed the responsibility of protecting the Indians, helping defend the colony against its enemies, and providing for the support of a parish priest. The encomienda policy did not work well on Hispanola as the native population declined precipitously by 1518, not from epidemic diseases so much as from mistreatment and culture shock. The encomienda worked more successfully on the mainland. Cortes rewarded his followers by assigning encomienda grants to himself and his comrades. Las Casas perusaded King Carlos that this was not a good idea, given what had happened on Hispanola and the other Caribbean islands. The king ordered Cortes not to establish the encomienda in New 69 Spain. Since Cortes had already done so, he ignored the order and succeeded in persuading the Crown that the system was needed to keep order in the new conquest. The order was revoked, and Indians contributed their tribute and labor to their conquerors. The encomenderos thus became effective heads of society in the central areas of Mexico and Peru, their families beginning a New World aristocracy. Of course, most of them were not of noble birth. Their claim to distinction came in surviving the wars of conquest, for which they claimed their rewards. But they soon learned to act noble. The tribute gathered for the encomenderos made them wealthy and powerful, but it came at a great cost to the Indians. At first they kept their language, clothing, and local organizations, but links to Spanish society were soon established that made the central areas more Hispanic than Indian. Encomenderos employed majordomos and estancieros (overseers and foremen) who lived among the Indians to see to the collection of tribute and labor, and brought with them systems of Spanish supervision and organization. Since Spaniards preferred to live in towns, encomienda Indians had to come to towns to perform periodic labor to fulfill their obligation and to deliver their tribute. They quarried stone, transported building materials, built houses and churches, and harvested crops. Their encomenderos also hired out their labor to other Spaniards. Tribute groups saw what the city looked like and experienced the beginnings of major social changes. Some remained in the towns to work as unskilled laborers. They lived on the edges of the towns in “temporary” huts that for many became permanent residences. Any economic disasterdrought, famine, fear of disease-could bring large numbers of Indians to town seeking work. Soon forests of huts surrounded Spanish towns. A population of Indians that included tribute parties, individual migrants, and permanent servants lived in the huts, these groups merging into a large labor force. The movement continued for centuries. Modern cities in Spanish-speaking America still have this same setup on their margins. Historically, the movement to the cities became a principal mechanism for acculturation and modernization. Almost immediately encomienda Indians experienced a dilemma not of their own making. Adjustment to their new Spanish rulers proved costly. Epidemic diseases, overwork, and cultural shock resulted in a 70 calamitous decline in population in the central areas. Mexico dropped from a pre-conquest population of an estaimated 25 million in 1519 to just over a million by 1600. A similar decline occurred in Peru. Encomenderos could not afford the expenses of their responsibilities with the decline in tribute. Although encomienda practices would continue in a few areas throughout the colonial period, in the central area it evolved into the development of haciendas (estates) involved in agriculture and ranching. The Spanish Crown also played a part in curbing encomienda grants. Encomenderos could be a rival political force to the audiencias (colonial administrators) and viceroys sent to establish stable government in the new colonies. To curb encomendero power, the Crown specified that encomienda grants could be only for two lives-the lifespan of the encomendero and one heir. Thereafter, the grant would revert to the Crown. Although there were many exceptions to this policy, eventually the number of encomiendas was reduced. In its place the Crown developed a new labor system for central Mexico and the Andean highlands, the repartimiento (basically, forced labor). The repartimiento was the Crown’s answer to the demands of Spaniards in the colonies that had not received encomienda grants, largely because they had arrived after the conquest. It was also a way to deal with the problem of the declining Indian population. Under the repartimiento system, adult male Indians were to report periodically to work on public works projects such as road construction, labor on ranches and farms, or work in the mines. Both encomenderos and non-encomienda Spaniards would get an allotment of Indian labor. The Indians received a small wage for their work, but what it all amounted to was a version of slavery. Tribal leaders who failed to fill village quotas were fined and imprisoned, and as disease continued to decimate the Indian population, it became ever more difficult to meet the quotas. Probably the most disastrous form of labor obligation was the mita, a version of the repartimiento that required Indians to work in the mines. The most notorious example of this system began in Peru in the 1570s under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. The mita required Indians to work for a six-month period, every seven years, at the San Luis Potosi mines. The work obligation did not include the time spent in traveling to and from the 71 mines that were in remote locations. Some 400 miles from the coast, and at altitudes between 12,000-17,000 feet, the mines presented enormous logistics problems in bringing labor and supplies to the mines and silver down to the coast for shipment to Spain. Little food could be grown in the mining area, so everything had to be brought in, and “everything” was speculative: when ships would arrive, what kind and how many particular products, and the instability of commodity prices all affected mining operations. Supplies had to be transported from the coast to the mines. Up to 1,000 Indians herded pack trains of 2,000 llamas over narrow passes and rough roads. Mine operators had to bring the labor in at spaced intervals, lest there be a glut or dearth of workers. Indians were expected to bring their own supplies of food, clothing, and bedding. The wages paid were so low an Indian went into debt to fulfill the mita requirement. As time went on, and the declining Indian population made it more difficult to meet the quotas, the same Indians were called more often. As the situation became intolerable, many Indians abandoned their homes and sought the stability of employment on haciendas as peons. Hacienda owners welcomed this labor and succeeded in keeping it exempt from mita service until 1732. Besides the mines, Indians could be assigned to obrajes (factories) where they turned out woolen and cotton cloth, sandals, hats, gunpowder, leather goods, and other consumer items. All this was done at low wages and long hours, with many abuses. Eventually the Crown recognized the unworkability of the repartimiento and abolished the agricultural part of it in central Mexico in 1630, though mining with repartimiento labor continued into the 18th century. As the practicality of the repartimiento system declined, it was replaced by so-called “free” labor-the contracting of Indians for employment rather than requiring quotas for forced labor. In practice free labor became pretty much like debt servitude and served as a way of providing a stable labor force on haciendas. Since wages could not pay for all an Indian’s debts, he had to remain on the hacienda until the debt was paid to the hacendado (owner). At death the debt was passed to the next generation. Indians found some advantages to this system: exemption from tribute and repartimiento service, and some land the Indian’s family could cultivate. 72 Over time, however, haciendas encroached on the ancestral lands of the native peoples. Indian pueblos lost their lands by legal or illegal methods. When the population decline ended in the early 17th century, and the number of Indians began to increase, native peoples found themselves on less land than before the conquest. In such areas as northern Mexico the loss of land reached a crisis point by the late 19th century when less than one percent of the people owned 99% of the land. “Land and liberty” became a battle cry of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and land reform has remained an issue among the nations of Latin America to the present day. The injustices done to the Indians did not go unchallenged. Carlos I and V, ruler of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor respectively, became deeply concerned over the issue of how Christians should conduct themselves towards human beings who were different in their race, religion, and culture. After almost a half century of Spanish conquest and exploitation in the New World, Carlos called a conference to determine whether the conquests were just or not, and for all new expeditions to cease until a decision was reached. No emperor or ruler before or since has made such a decision; surely his conscience was troubled by reports of Indian mortality and conquistador avoidance of royal edicts. The conference began in mid-August 1550 in the city of Valladolid in Spain and lasted about a month. Fourteen judges presided. Representing the view that the Indians had received unjust treatment was Bartolome de las Casas. Juan Gines de Sepulveda took the opposite view, based on Aristotelian philosophy, that some people were meant by nature to be slaves of others. Both men were widely respected and renowned as scholars. Sepulveda held that the king of Spain had the right to wage war on Indians prior to preaching Christianity to them, and that religion followed conquest. Las Casas argued that this was unjust. The outcome of the debate, which became quite complicated and involved, was inconclusive. The judges were stalemated and reluctant to render opinions individually. Since they left town immedately after the conference, obtaining a consensus opinion from them proved impossible. In the years that followed, both sides claimed victory. “Though the application of Aristotelian ideas to the Indians seems a fairly clear-cut issue, the questions discussed [at Valladolid] remain complicated,” 73 observes historian Lewis Hanke. “Not only have different conclusions been reached by men through the centuries, but individuals change their minds on the subject.” One unfortunate aspect of las Casas’s career was that his writings were translated into several languages, including English, and were widely circulated. Since his writing was highly polemical, people in other countries took a negative view of Spanish settlement in the New World, though the record for England and Portugal was hardly better in treatment of native peoples. The Spanish Crown did find much of las Casas’s argument persuasive and urged colonizers to use friendly persuasion rather than warfare to bring Indians to the Catholic faith. The earlier Laws of Burgos were modified by the New Laws of 1542, an unsuccessful attempt to abolish the encomienda system. Carlos’s son, Philip II, issued an edict in 1573 requiring Spaniards to explain the obligations of the Spanish Crown so that Indians might understand the benefits of accepting Spanish sovereignty. In the end, the troubled conscience of Carlos I and the decades of effort by Bartolome de las Casas had little effect on the sufferings of conquered Indians or the outlook of conquering Spaniards. Spain saw two societies in the Americas existing side by side: republica de indios and republica de espanoles. The two were linked in many negative ways, from the dominance of Spaniards over Indians culturally, economically, and politically to the powerlessness of the Indians to protest against the imbalance. Many textbooks on the history of Latin America deal with only a small part of the populations of the Latin American nations; the history of the largely Indian poor masses remains neglected or untold. Creation of a Spanish Society Even as Spanish conquistadors such as the Pizarro brothers and the Almagrists were busy killing each other off in rival gang wars, a complete and intact Spanish society was migrating to the Indies. All levels of society sent people. In Spain (as elsewhere in Europe), the practice of primogeniture left the family inheritance to the oldest son. Younger sons had the choices of the priesthood, a military career, or the challenge and opportunity of the colonies. Men whose education varied from doctorates 74 of law to total illiteracy, and everyone in between, came to the Indies. For decades the migration was overbalanced with an excess of young single men, but many of those went off on entradas to unknown frontiers and were never heard from again. Fewer Spanish women came to the Indies than did English women to the English colonies, but enough came to preserve important cultural elements. Like their male counterparts, they came from all over Spain and had all types of backgrounds. Leading Spanish colonists--encomenderos, artisans, professionals-sought Spanish women for marriage, less for romance than to observe the laws of succession. There seemed little point in acquiring wealth and power if there was no direct heir to carry on the family name. Women who could pass for well-born ladies could sometimes be imported to the colonies almost as a business venture, but their presence was necessary if Spanish traditions and culture were to be transplanted to the New World. In the absence of their husbands, women became effective heads of households, teaching the Spanish language to Indian and African servants, managing business affairs, and acquiring property in their own right in several successive marriages. The “rich widow” almost became a stereotype of the eligible Spanish woman in the Indies. Spanish women held a much higher status than did their English counterparts; they retained important rights upon marriage and could own property and businesses themselves, something unheard of in England and the United States until well into the 19th century. Africans were with Spaniards in America almost from the first contact. Although many were slaves, others had free status and were acculturated to Spanish culture, speaking the language and performing a wide range of activities necessary to Spanish society. They were servants, artisans, soldiers, and estancieros. Plantation slavery did not exist in Spanish America until well into the colonial period. African slaves had certain rights that they took care to preserve. From the viewpoint of the Indians, Africans were just so many more Spaniards, only of another color. The Africans saw the Indians in much the same way as Spaniards did-an inferior people to be exploited. Some African slaves even had Indians working for them. Whether slaves or freedmen, Africans remained subordinated within the Spanish community. Few found it possible to continue African traditions. 75 Spaniards shifted them around and mingled them with other Africans who spoke a different language. Such fragmentation served two purposes: it discouraged rebellion and hastened acculturation into Spanish society. Most Africans had to speak Spanish to each other. Many Africans didn’t come from Africa anyway; they came to the New World by way of Spain or Portugal, where they or their parents had learned occupational skills and European ways. Spaniards classified Africans in several ways. They at first used the term criollo to mean any person of African descent born outside Africa, including blacks from Spain. The term soon applied to white persons born in the Americas, though the French in Louisiana used the term to describe blacks born there. Inevitably there was a mingling of races, usually involving a Spanish father and Indian or African mother. The offspring of white and black, the mulatto, held a higher status than the African. They were emancipated from slavery more often and became a dynamic group in Hispanic society. To the Spaniards, mulattoes were in a category apart from blacks, a distinction not made in the English colonies and, subsequently, the United States, where the “drop of blood” rule determined one’s race. In the United States, having a black grandparent on the family tree would mean a person was a quadroon; having a black greatgrandparent made a person an octoroon (one-eighth black), though the proportion of white blood at that point made African features all but invisible. The mixing of Spanish and Indian resulted in offspring called mestizo. With the passage of several generations, race mixture became extremely difficult to classify. The Spanish government at one point came up with sixteen categories for racial identification, applying names for the children of Spaniard and mestizo (castizo), Spaniard and mulatto (morisco), Spaniard and morisco (chino or albino), Indian and Chino (sale atras), and other permutations. Ultimately the categorization broke down as unrealistic, and as race became less important in Hispanic society to all except the elite who attempted to preserve their "purity of blood.” To the materially successful mestizo or mulatto, higher status was for sale as the Crown would sell a document attesting to the whiteness of the purchaser. “Wealth, not gentle birth or racial purity, was the distinguishing characteristic of the colonial aristocracy,” notes historian Benjamin Keen. 76 Africans were thus of major importance during and after the conquest period. They never posed a threat to Spanish cultural dominance but instead adapted to it. The net effect was to increase the number of Spaniards as agents and auxiliaries, helping to put the Hispanic imprint on the Americas. Colonial society became a caste society of white, mestizo, mulatto, black, and Indian; but over time the terms mestizo and Indian became less physical descriptions than social concepts applying to a person’s status and occupation. Status and Occupation in Hispanic Society Although encomenderos occupied the top rung of the economic and social ladder of Hispanic society, there were many steps beneath them. Among the general class of professional people were the secular and regular clergy, lawyers, physicians, and notaries. Spaniards respected the written word and legal formulas to an unusual degree. They included notaries on all expeditions, and notaries could be found in the smallest towns and mining camps. Spanish expedition leaders wanted notaries to verify in writing decisions taken that later might be questioned. This need to get things in writing made notaries a ubiquitous group, more numerous than lawyers. They worked as clerks, constables, and accountants. Merchants came in two classifications. The term “merchant” applied to high-status men who imported and sold general European merchandise and sent silver and gold back to Spain. Merchants in the colonies represented big companies headquartered in Seville, and these colonial junior partners had the goal of making enough money to return to Spain and found their own companies. The second group, much lower in status, included local dealers who bought and sold locally and stayed in one town. The term “artisans” applied to anyone involved in making the items settlers needed. They purchased cloth and iron imported by the merchants and made them into the clothing and tools that Spain could not send to the colonies. Successful artisans bought African slaves and trained them in the work to be done; they also hired Indian apprentices. Although their social status was not high, artisans could make a good living and be 77 respected for the work they did, and they became permanent members of the communities they served. Some Spanish peasants came to the Indies and became agricultural supervisors, overseeing the labor of Indians and Africans. Their status was low, but they played an important role in introducing European crops and farming methods. Even lower than Spanish gardeners and farmers were sailors and foreigners. At a point in time when the king of Spain was also the Holy Roman Emperor, and Habsburg territory included non-Spanish lands, it was unavoidable that foreigners owing allegiance to the Habsburg dynasty might find their way to the Indies despite Spanish restrictions on foreign immigrants. Many foreigners (and Iberian neighbors such as Basques and Portuguese) served as sailors on Spanish ships. Unlike the sea-faring Portuguese, Spaniards held sailors in low status, a despised but necessary group that brought settlers, merchandise, and supplies to the New World. But Spain bred a land-oriented people, so no respect and few rewards went to the sailors who made travel possible. At rock bottom on the Spanish social ladder, though above Indians and slaves, were transients. These were men who had no particular function in life, and as vagrants wandered around looking for opportunities. Arriving after the conquest and without any connections, they presented an idle and potentially troublesome element in Spanish society. Encomenderos, enjoying a virtually baronial status, took in transients as guests, especially when the visitor came from the same region in Spain. As guests the transients formed a semi-dependent relationship to the master of the house, enjoying the custom of the host deriving prestige from the number of people he fed at his table. This absorption of transients as house guests helped defuse the polarization of wealthy encomenderos and other elites from poor and jealous transients. Taking in some transients as house guests hardly accounted for the much larger number who did not enjoy such favor. But these men had come for the purpose of getting rich, and there were just enough examples of success to lure them on entradas-any expedition of discovery, conquest, or settlement would do. With the central areas under control, viceroys and governors found it expedient to announce expeditions to unknown lands, more to disperse the excess transients than to conquer new territory. Many transients died on these expeditions, thus ridding the central areas of a 78 troublesome element. And if an area was discovered that actually yielded gold and other riches, so much the better. Society in a Fringe Area With incredible good fortune Spaniards had struck it rich in conquering areas with dense native populations, a high level of civilization, and tangible assets. Spanish explorers who went to other areas found treasure much more elusive. Such was the case with explorers who headed up the Rio de la Plata south of Brazil in 1535. They founded Santa Maria de Buenos Aires (the future capital of Argentina) but encountered nomadic Indians who were excellent and mobile warriors. Pinned down inside their little fort, the Spaniards suffered from starvation and disease. They finally abandoned Buenos Aires as hopeless and went up the river about a thousand miles until they found sedentary Indians who grew crops and lived in villages. There they founded Asuncion (the future capital of Paraguay) and began a long coexistence with the Guarani people. Attempts to establish the encomienda system, however, met with failure. Unlike the structured society of the Aztecs where the Spaniards could simply replace the top level, the Guarani had no tribute system, no large cities, and little hierarchical authority. Clearly, the Spaniards would have to adapt to this new situation. The fact that some 350 Spaniards were surrounded by upwards of 200,000 Indians seems not to have bothered the Spaniards in Paraguay. They helped the Guarani fight off nomadic Indian enemies, and the Guarani came to look at the Spaniards as chiefs or headmen, but in Indian rather than Hispanic terms. Hospitable to an extreme, they freely gave their women to the Spaniards as wives and concubines. Every Spaniard had access to between fifteen and a hundred women, but this sexual paradise came at a price. Having given their women, the Guarani now considered the Spaniards as relatives! The encomienda idea became personal service. Before long the “Spaniards” in Paraguay were really mestizos, and Paraguay long existed as a backwater Spanish colony attracting few settlers, a place where government officials reluctantly accepted assignment. 79 European Diseases in the Americas The one-sidedness of disease striking the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere while leaving Europeans relatively untouched must have profoundly affected the Indians. Spanish microbes may have killed up to 90% of the pre-Columbian New World population in some areas (and, later, England and French and Portuguese and Dutch would make their contributions to Indian mortality as well). No one in the 16th century understood how diseases spread. Fresh still in the memory of Europeans was the bubonic plague that had killed up to half the people in Europe in the 14th century, with recurring epidemics for the next 300 years. People of that time accepted such catastrophes as the will of God and looked for scapegoats on whom or what the blame could be placed: Jews, heretics, witches, lightning, or Christians who had lapsed into sinful ways. Europeans certainly did not know the various ways that diseases could be spread. Mosquitoes, fleas, lice, and tsetse flies carrying disease would infect by biting. So we have malaria, plague, typhus, yellow fever, and encephalytis. Airborne diseases spread influenza, diphtheria, pneumonic plague, and other diseases. Smallpox spread through the air and through indirect contact, such as use of infected blankets. Europeans didn’t know the difference between bacterial and viral diseases, not that it mattered, for tuberculosis and cholera (bacterial) could kill just as easily as measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and pertussis. By contrast, with only one possible exception (syphilis), New World inhabitants sent no diseases in the opposite direction. They died in the thousands from these European-sent epidemics. When Hernando de Soto went on his rampage in southeastern North America, seeking gold and killing anyone who couldn’t provide it, his expedition ran across deserted villages where people had only recently died of smallpox. Pizarro had the same experience; Huayna-Capac, the father of Atahualpa, may have died of the disease well before Pizarro arrived in Peru. Microbes traveled far faster than the speediest Spanish horseman. The question of why the spread of disease was so one-sided is easy enough to explain. For thousands of years Old World peoples lived among livestock-cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses. They shared the same ground and were exposed to animal feces, urine, breath, blood, and sores. 80 The relationship had been going on for some 8,000 years. Animal diseases such as rinderpest in cattle mutated into measles; cowpox into smallpox; and other similar transferences. Thousands if not millions of Europeans might die of disease, but many were resistant, some with natural immunities, and that resistance would be passed on to their children. In a Europe notorious for its filthy cities and lack of hygiene, only the hardiest survived, and they brought that hardiness-and disease-to the New World. With no history of livestock other than the llamas of the Andes region, New World peoples had no immunities against these contagious and infectious diseases. Apart from the dense populations of central Mexico and the Andean highlands, most native peoples lived in relatively small settlements that could easily be decimated by smallpox or measles. Little wonder that diseases that didn’t seem to kill Spaniards but devastated Indians could be counted, along with cannon, steel, horses, and war dogs-and the Christian God-as overwhelming forces which the Indians could not successfully resist. One final note: Europeans engaging in the slave trade along the west African coast met a similar fate as heat and humidity bred the mosquitoes that infected them with malaria and other tropical diseases. In our own time, we may sometimes forget that “modern” medical knowledge dates only to the 1880s and the great breakthroughs of Koch, Pasteur, and other dedicated researchers who established the germ theory of disease. 81 For Further Reading Davies, K.A. Landowners in Colonial Peru (1984). Gibson, Charles. Spain in America (1966). Hanke, Lewis. Aristotle and the American Indian: A Story in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (1959). Lockhard, James. Spanish Peru, 1532-1560 (1968). Morner, Magnus. Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (1967). Simpson, Lesley B. The Encomienda in New Spain (1950). Wagner, Henry R. The Life and Writings of Bartolome de las Casas (1967). Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992). 82 CHAPTER 6: SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE Many students taking a U.S. History course-and many people who are not-make two false assumptions about slavery and the slave trade. The first of these is that slavery existed only in the United States, not thinking through to the fact that slavery became an integral part of the Western Hemisphere’s economy during the colonial period and for most of the 19th century. The second assumption is that slaves were kidnapped from Africa; in actuality only a small percentage of slaves from Africa were taken forcibly. In recent years some African American leaders and a few white politicians, who evidently have not studied history, have called for reparations-payments to blacks in the United States today to redress the wrong done to slave ancestors. To be consistent in the issue of reparations, the United States should not stand alone in such judgment. Portugal, England, Holland, and France all participated in the slave trade, decades and even centuries before the establishment of the United States. Spain, following the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas that kept it on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean, did not send slave ships to Africa, but its colonies became major purchasers of slaves from the slave traders who did go there. In modern times, most of the nation members of the Organization of American States utilized slavery as a foundation of their economic activity during the colonial period and well into the 19th century, among them Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Venezuela, Peru, Belize, Trinidad-Tobago, Haiti, and others. The Virgin Islands (bought by the U.S. from Denmark in 1917) and Puerto Rico (acquired by the U.S. from Spain after the SpanishAmerican War) had slaves working on plantations there long before they became U.S. possessions. Since slavery was based on the slave trade, African nations must share in the guilt, since the slave trade existed well before imperialist nations took control of most of Africa in the late 19th century. Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, and Angola are present-day nations that from the 16th to the 19th centuries provided the vast majority of the estimated 11 million slaves transported to the Americas. When Europeans made contact with this 83 region it was generally divided as the Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, and Slave Coast, taking in the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra-the African coastline running due east just north of the Equator to about fifteen degrees south latitude. Add to this Mozambique on the east coast of Africa and the island of Madagascar for supplying slaves, plus the islands of Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa as major areas where the selling and buying of slaves took place. The United States stands far from alone in sharing the guilt of slave ownership and the slave trade. Slavery itself is as old as recorded history, and even older. Archaeological research shows some evidence of slavery in lower Egypt some 10,000 years ago. Greece, the so-called birthplace of democracy, had a large slave population, as did Rome, as well as most societies in ancient, medieval, and even modern times. Read the history of any area of the world, and slaves do the work of their masters in Africa, Asia, Europe, and both North and South America. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, mentions slavery. Joseph, the most famous slave in the Old Testament, was sold into captivity by his jealous brothers. Moses freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. For all but the last 500 years of recorded history, becoming a slave was not a matter of race. It was the outcome of winners over losers, conquerors and defeated, and not always from the fortunes of war. For example, the Mexica of the Valley of Mexico, known mainly today as the Aztecs, loved to gamble and would bet entire fortunes in their gaming. With all else lost, an Aztec might bet his personal liberty or the freedom of a son, the period of servitude negotiable with the size of the bet. Servitude appeared in many guises, including indentured servants, peons, and serfs. Some people have had to choose between security and slavery or uncertainty and liberty, a hard decision for anyone to have to make. The word slave itself calls for definition. It derives from slav, the Slavic people conquered by other nations, and became the generic term for anyone living in servitude. Words such as bondage suggest a legal basis (e.g., bail bonds). Debt peonage is a form of hereditary servitude where debts are passed to the next generation and beyond. Until the debt is paid, the debtor owes service to the creditor. Serfs were bound to the land owned by a noble landowner, an example of the strong maintaining control 84 over the weak and the stability (and ultimate stagnation) of the society that kept serfs, whether in the Middle Ages or in Tsarist Russia until 1862. The obligations of slaves varied from one society to another. Clearly the duties of a household servant, artisan, farm worker, fisherman, or some other work requiring a degree of skill suggest a fairly close relationship between master and slave. Free people became slaves when their side lost a war; judges sentenced criminals to a term or a life of slavery. In the Duala section of Cameroon in the colonial period, European slave traders found the term “slave” applied to someone who was a captive, a stranger, a fisherman, or someone from the African interior bought by the Duala. Democracy, civil rights, government by the people, democratic republic, civil liberties-all are modern concepts. Most people in almost all societies did not enjoy liberty or the rights of citizenship the way these terms are endorsed today. Organizations such as Amnesty International, monitoring human rights abuses, are modern creations. Slavery in most societies (not all) today is a crime for which the slaveowners may be imprisoned-ironically, sentenced to a term of involuntary servitude. Occasionally there are stories in the news of undocumented immigrants being pressed into slave-like conditions to produce some product such as clothing. Alone in an alien land, unable to speak the language, not free to leave, working for pennies a day, such people are, in effect, slaves. The term is also applied to workers-often children-working for a few cents a day in Third World countries, making a product often sold for a high price, such as designer clothing or tennis shoes. Public outrage erupts at such injustices, then subsides as people in the United States leave it to their government to make the appropriate protest. Regardless of the definitions of slavery, its obligations, and where it was practiced, slavery was basically a color-blind activity until the 15th century. During the Crusades victorious Christians made slaves of Muslim prisoners; the Muslims did the same to the Christians when they won the battle. But slavery took on an entirely new meaning when Portuguese seafarers, heading down the west coast of Africa, turned eastward along the coastline and encountered the kingdoms along the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra. 85 Portugal’s (and Europe’s) need for slave labor began modestly enough. African kings and their societies were already involved in a slave trade with interior Africa that, like the slave trade in Europe, was based largely on success in war. Prisoners were a commodity that could be traded for products their captors wanted, needed, or could not make for themselves. The kingdoms along the coastline could also offer gold, palm oil (used in soap and lubricants), and a variety of tropical products. In turn, the Europeans, starting with the Portuguese, could offer such trade goods as liquor, brass and copper utensils, linen and cotton cloth, various tools, beads, and other manufactured items. Portugal’s interest in slaves stemmed from the beginnings of plantation agriculture in the Azores, Madeiras, and Cape Verde Islands. These fertile but uninhabited islands seemed ideal for the production of surgar cane, a commodity that in the 15th century was produced for Europe in limited quantities mainly in the Mediterranean region. Plantation slavery began because the European settlers in the Western Hemisphere soon found that certain profitable economic endeavors required large numbers of workers. Indigenous peoples quickly proved themselves unable to meet the requirement. Epidemic diseases and overwork depopulated the Caribbean islands, and Portuguese settlers in Brazil had to look deeper into the interior to purchase or kidnap Indians. The initial conquest of Aztecs and Incas skimmed off the easiest riches of gold and silver. Then came the harder work of gold and silver mining. The encomienda and repartimiento systems continued to compel Indian labor, despite the decline in population. Beyond New Spain and Peru, however, other economic possibilities were demanding labor. First and foremost was sugar, a most remarkable product that consumers found almost addictive. Sugar transformed the diet of Europeans. It changed the foods they ate, bringing new flavor and palatability. It enhanced their beverages and increased the consumption of Far East tea and New World cacao, from which came chocolate. It could be processed into molasses, and molasses made into rum, each step increasing the value of the product. Misleadingly, it seemed to provide renewed energy; slaves were encouraged to drink the juice of the sugar cane as they worked. 86 Other products demanding extensive labor were rice, coffee, indigo, and tobacco. Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 reinvigorated slavery in the United States in the 19th century. Demand for slave labor did not come from all colonizing regions at the same time. Some general chronological outlines may be given. Portugal effectively began the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and from the mid-15th century to 1800 some 40% of all slaves went to Brazil. Great Britain became actively involved in the slave trade from 1698 until the nation outlawed it in 1807. During the 117 years of the trade, the British brought more than 2.5 million slaves to the Western Hemisphere. France accounted for more than 1.1 million in the period 1701-1800. What did slaves cost? To buy 180 slaves on the Gambia coast in 1740, European traders offered 1,179 silver coins, 430 iron bars, 92 cutlass swords, 430 gun flints, 1,162 kilograms of salt, 300 kilograms linen cloth, 130 kilograms Manchester textiles, 108 kilograms India textiles, 219 kilograms woolen cloth, 47 reams of paper, 164 guns, 71 pairs of pistols (a “brace” of two pistols was one pair) 301 kilograms pewter ware, 16 kilograms lead balls, 102 brass pans, 518 kilograms gunpowder, 2 rods of copper, and 119 gallons of rum. To this should be added 17 kilograms cowrie shells, 60,00 crystal stones, and 15,195 beads. The African monarchs also expected presents: more firearms, wine, brandy, fine clothing, a clock, perhaps a lamp. It should be noted that this list and its value did not represent the peak of slave prices. (source: Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, p. 386.) From its beginnings the slave trade sent a minimum of 10,000 slaves a year by 1650, a figure that by 1713 was up to 40,000 annually. As colonial plantations grew, so did the demand for labor. Between 1741 and 1810, the annual average was 60,000 a year. When Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, with the United States following suit a year later, other nations took up the slack with increasing numbers into the 1840s. Since Spain as a nation did not take part in the buying of slaves in Africa, the Council of the Indies had to do something for the labor demands of Spanish planters. The answer was the asiento, a contractual agreement between Spain and another nation annually to supply a certain number of slaves to Spanish colonists. Naturally, the contract was let to 87 the highest bidder, with annual fees to be paid as well. The actual profit gleaned from the asiento after fees and bribes were paid was not great; the money lay in the opporunity offered by the contract to smuggle in additional slaves and contraband goods. At one time or another England, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal held asiento contracts. In addition to winning an asiento, European nations chartered companies with monopoly rights to buy African slaves. Probably the most famous of these was England’s Royal African Company. Companies established factories (trading posts), usually on islands off the African coast. They would stockpile trade goods, negotiate with African monarchs and merchants, and keep their purchases in barracoons, essentially prisons where the slaves would be warehoused until they were loaded on an outbound ship. Negotiations could take weeks or even months to complete. Any number of factors could complicate the dealing: a lack of slaves at the source of supply, or an excess number; displeasure with the gifts or trade goods; the time of year, the weather, or disease. Europeans seldom bothered to find out how the kingdoms acquired the slaves. Enterprising merchants who had not received a charter or asiento contract resented their exclusion. They operated as independent traders, much to the protest of the chartered companies. However, the chartered companies were failing to meet the demands of the users of slave labor. Plantation owners complained of an undersupply of slaves, high prices, and slaves of poor quality (too young, too old, or in poor health). In 1698 Parliament ended the Royal African Company’s monopoly and opened the trade to all English subjects. Free traders had to pay a duty to the company for maintenance of the trading posts and forts; but the traders also built their own factories. The end of the monopoly caused aggressive competition for slaves on the African coast, with the private traders far exceeding the Royal African Company in shipping slaves. Independent traders from other nations besides England also got into the act. It is one of history’s ironies that slavery was the cause of the victory of “free trade” over monopoly. Until well into the 18th century the British Navy believed that the slave trade provided a “cradle for seamen.” That is, young men, or even boys, allegedly gained valuable seamanship experience by serving on slave ships, and this experience created opportunities for careers in the British 88 Navy. The belief was shown to be a myth when advocates calling for the abolition of the slave trade presented statistics demonstrating that the trade was actually the graveyard of sailors, not its cradle. In counterpoint to the European diseases that decimated Indian populations, African diseases shortened the lives of large numbers of European sailors, officers, and merchants. Malaria, encephalitis, yaws, and any kind of tropical fever made the slave trade a risky enterprise for Europeans. A poet with a morbid sense of humor composed these lines: Beware and take care Of the Bight of Benin; For one that comes out, There are forty go in. After a cargo of slaves was purchased, traders loaded them into the hold of the ship. Much has been made of the intolerable shipboard conditions-the lack of individual space, fresh air, and proper hygiene, and the high mortality rates. Traders debated the merits of “tight packing” and “loose packing” in the ships. Depending on one’s viewpoint, tight packing resulted in a higher death rate, whereas loose packing had a lower death rate but with fewer slaves shipped, profit was lower. The debate, often cited by historians, did not include the probability of illness and disease spread by slaves in the barracoons during the time traders and African rulers dickered over the prices, or the waiting until the weather was right to set sail. Obviously, it was to the traders’ financial interests to keep their cargo alive during the voyage. Possibly the most famous illustration of a slave ship is the crosssection of the Brookes, a British slave ship that operated in 1783 and 1784. Weighing 320 tons, the Brookes could and did pack more than 600 slaves into its hold. Pictures of the cross-section, showing slaves packed together like sardines, have appeared in numerous U.S. history textbooks and studies of slavery and the slave trade. Yet it was an atypical ship, for almost all the slave ships carried far fewer slaves, perhaps on average between 100 and 150. The Brookes gained notoriety because Thomas Clarkson, a British abolitionist, published the diagram, and thousands of copies were printed. Then as now, the magnitude of the horror of the cross-section shocked people and strengthened the argument against the slave trade. But it was an extreme example, and as such was far more 89 sensational than the mundane reality of hundreds of ships ferrying their cargoes of slaves across the Atlantic, tens of thousands of slaves each year, every year, until the 1870s. Slave Revolts Of the thousands of voyages made by slave ships between the 17th and 19th centuries, one stands out in popular awareness: the revolt of the slaves on the Amistad. Several books, a major motion picture, and web sites have made this incident famous; but it was hardly the only such revolt. At least 392 cases of shipboard revolt by slaves between 1698 and 1807 are on record, with another 93 incidents of non-slave Africans against ships and longboats (shore-based attacks) as well. Put another way, up to 10% of the slave ships experienced revolts. Ship commanders were well aware of the possibility of rebellion and took precautions against it. They equipped their ships with firearms, cannon, and swivel guns. Extra crewmen might be hired. To stop slaves from committing suicide by jumping overboard, they hung nets along the side. Few slave revolts succeeded. Slaves and crew might suffer injuries or death, but throughout the period the death toll amounted to around 1%, or 100,000 of the 11 million. Slaveowners did not make any money from a slave who died. However, another way of looking at the statistics shows that resistance, whether successful or unsuccessful, may have kept a million Africans from being sold into slavery, since higher costs for resistance prevention meant less money for slave purchases. Research has shown little pattern to slave revolts, other than most occurred onboard, at night, or in daytime. Half of the known revolts occurred before the ships set sail, a third on the Middle Passage, and about 10% before the voyage began. Slaves may have rebelled more while still in sight of Africa. Larger ships took more time to load, and were thus exposed to revolt. A ship’s crew suffering from disease could be vulnerable. Slave women, often as not sexually abused by crewmen, might gain access to keys, weapons, or vital information. 90 Rationalizing the Trade The Middle Passage has been recognized as the most difficult of the trans-Atlantic slave routes. Sailing ships were vulnerable to the vagaries of wind currents and weather conditions; a voyage from Africa to the Caribbean or Atlantic coast of North America might take from two to four months. The longer a voyage, the higher the mortality rate-for crew as well as slaves. In cramped conditions, chained together, given little chance to exercise or have proper sanitation, some slaves succumbed to disease. When the demand for slave labor ran high, traders took slaves who were too young, too old, or in poor health. These people were called “refuse” slaves, so much marketable trash, and were more likely to die on the voyage. Until the late 18th century few Europeans troubled themselves over the morality of the African slave trade. They thought of it in economic terms, and where slavery might be lamented by its practitioners for its inhumanity to man, they argued its necessity in a number of ways. Economic realities provided an important justification. Plantation agriculture called for large numbers of laborers that Indians could not or would not provide. What about “free” labor, that is, a person working for wages? Few European workers were willing to remain in this status for long, since the New World offered opportunities to the ambitious. Indentured servitude was another alternative. Tens of thousands of Europeans sold themselves into indentured servitude for the price of a ship’s ticket to the Americas, especially to the English colonies. This method attracted mainly young men who traded their liberty for a contract of two, four, seven (the most common) or up to fourteen years of working for someone else. Many indentured servants ran away, to be lost in the crowd of a town or to another colony, particularly in British North America. But there were never enough white Europeans as free laborers or indentured servants anyway, especially in the tropical regions. Whites died in the tropical areas of disease just as they did in Africa. The survivors who ran the plantations preferred Africans who at least had some immunity to tropical diseases, a culture that accepted slavery as a condition of existence, and who could be brought and trained to do the work that made the owner a lot of money. 91 Other rationales may seem hypocritical today, but many people nonetheless believed them. One was the matter of Noah’s curse. In Genesis 9: 21-27, after the Flood had subsided, Norah went to work as a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. He made wine from the grapes, got drunk, and went into his tent where, stark naked, he fell asleep. His son Ham entered Noah’s tent without knocking, saw his naked father, and went and told his brothers about it. Shem and Japeth entered the tent backward so as not to see their father’s nakedness, and covered him with a garment. When Noah learned what had happened, he cursed Ham and declared that Ham’s son Canaan would be “a servant of servants” to his brethren. In the passages that followed this story the various descendants of Noah established families and societies in different places. From this biblical story came the belief that Ham’s descendants became Africans, and Noah’s curse made them the perpetual “servants” of others. Some interpreters of the story even claimed that Ham had dark skin; this made it easier to believe Africans were descended from the tribe of Ham. Another religious view held that Europeans were doing Africans a favor by buying them as slaves. Europeans convinced themselves this was the Christian thing to do. Africans were savages, cannibals, heathens, pagans who could only benefit from hearing about Jesus Christ and the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Christian purchasers woul give them a better life away from African captivity. Of course, the question of whether to educate African slaves and teach them Christian precepts created uncomfortable conundrums for slaveowners. An educated slave might question his status (and many did). Slaves learning of the Christian faith and the teachings of Jesus might also wonder about the inconsistencies in the beliefs of their masters. Some Christian Europeans believed it was unjust to own a slave who was a Christian (Muslim slaves were another matter). Depending on time, place, and circumstance, slaves in Portuguese and Spanish colonies, professing themselves Christians, were manumitted on an individual basis. Most slaveowners ignored any troubling sense of Christian morality and literally worked their slaves to death. The average life expectancy of a slave on a sugar plantation was about seven years. Planting and harvesting sugar cane was hard enough work; processing the cane into sugar required long hours of grueling labor that physically 92 exhausted even the strongest slaves. Plantation owners calculated the cost of a slave purchase every seven years against not working a slave to death and found it cost-effective to use up the slave. Slave mortality exceeded net increase in Caribbean colonies, necessitating a constant renewal of the labor supply. Slaveowners bought slaves to perform a variety of tasks beyond field hand work. “African slaves were employed as servants, masons, carpenters, leather-workers, washerwomen and cooks, as well as in plantations and in the textile obrajes or workshops,” notes Blackburn (p. 135). In the colonial period South Carolina concentrated on the production of rice, a staple requiring clearing of trees, building levees and ditches, and making sluice gates to control water flow. Rice came from Madagascar and the Guinea Coast of Africa, and many slaves were already familiar with its cultivation. Slaves planted, flooded, drained, hoed, dried, and weeded the fields, many of these tasks done repeatedly, knee-deep in water and stooped over much of the time. At harvest the rice had to be cut, sheaved, brought to the mill, and then pounded, winnowed, screened, and packed in barrels. From just over 10,000 pounds in 1698, rice production reached more than 83 million pounds in 1770. Able-bodied men constituted the main slave work force in the fields, but a significant number of female slaves were also brought to the Americas. Large-scale plantation owners employed overseers who formed work gangs, and over time a slave hierarchy of responsibility developed. Work gangs often included female slaves. Successful plantation owners knew how to organize the work; gangs were formed according to age and ability. Children, strong men, women and less physically fit men, and older slaves had specifically assigned tasks. With each new generation came the result of the union of slavemaster and female slave. The role of mulatto offspring in slave societies varied from one area to another. Generally, mulattoes in Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies were freed much more often than in the English colonies, and ambitious mulattoes could achieve success in business activities. After several generations, light-skinned mulattoes might pass for white, a crossing made easier with accumulated wealth. By contrast, in the English slave colonies, a person was black no matter how 93 much the racial strain was diluted, and that person, like his or her parents, would also be a slave. The French went to extremes in defining race. Moreau de St-Mery, a French planter on Saint Domingue in the late 18th century, compiled a table listing 128 categories of mixed-blood combinations, the most extreme being one part black to 127 parts white (in genealogical terms, one of a person’s great-great-great-great-great-grandparents was black, all others were white). French colonials commonly spoke of quadroons (a quarter black) and octoroons (an eighth black). Portuguese authorities organized militia companies according to color and status, and the colors included pardos e bastardos forros (free mulattoes and half-castes), pretos y pardos forros (free blacks and mulattoes), pretos e mesticos forros (free blacks and free mixed-bloods), indios e bastardos (Indians and halfcastes). As noted earlier, the Spaniards defined sixteen racial categories, working out terms for offspring of white and red, white and black, white and mestizo, mestizo and mulatto, and so forth, but gave up when it proved impossible to tell by sight into which category a person of color belonged. Whites of the ruling class were determined to keep people of color defined as the Other; colonial plantation society was an exclusive one, not an inclusive one. The English colonial societies of North America were distinct from their counterparts in the Caribbean and South America in another important regard. Unlike the French, Portuguese, Spanish, and British Caribbean colonies, the North American colonies experienced a net gain in their slave population through natural increase. In other words, birth rates exceeded death rates. Much of the reason for this stemmed from the work done by the slaves. Tobacco cultivation in North America was less strenuous than sugar cane in the Caribbean or Brazil, and the climate was more temperate. Arduous labor done by females in the sugar cane fields resulted in fewer pregnancies and a higher infant mortality. The slave colonies in North America made the net gain a benefit by defining slavery in perpetuity. A child born of slave parents was also a slave. The heyday of plantation agriculture occurred in the 18th century. Cargoes of sugar, molasses, rum, tobacco, indigo, rice, and other New World products made the rounds of Europe and Africa in what became known as the Triangular Trade. In the Western Hemisphere, the Sugar 94 Islands served as cash cows for their mother countries. France acquired the western half of the island of Santo Domingo from Spain in 1697; a century later it had become France’s richest colony. When the slaves revolted there, Napoleon Bonaparte was so anxious to recover the lost revenue that he swindled Carlos IV out of the Louisiana Territory in order to establish a base from which his armies could put down the revolt. Anyone puzzling over why French, English, Dutch, Danish, and Spanish heritages can be found in close proximity on the Caribbean islands of Guadalupe, Anguilla, the Virgin Islands, and the Dominican Republic, as well as Antigua, St. Christopher-Nevis, Montserrat, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, not to mention the Netherlands Antilles islands, the Bahamas, and other small islands, need only look at the sugar cane produced in the 18th century and the Africans who were brought there to work and die on the plantations. Abolishing the Slave Trade The immorality of slavery went ignored until the late 18th century. Except for the Quakers, no European nation involved in the slave trade worried overmuch about the buying and selling of human beings except as how much profit could be made from the business. Perhaps the changing times began to shed a little light on the immorality of slavery. It seemed oxymoronic to believe that all men were created equal, as Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, yet to own slaves, as Jefferson did. A few men thought twice about it. John Newton, a captain who made one slave voyage too many, experienced an epiphany, became a Quaker, and called for abolition of the slave trade. He also wrote Amazing Grace. It seems ironic that England, a major player in the 18th-century slave trade, should lead the vanguard for the ending of that same trade. Some modern cynics claim that with the English colonies on mainland North America having been lost to independence, and Jamaica already plentiful with slaves, the British colonies needed no further imports. Scholars note the growth of free trade, the Industrial Revolution, new technologies, and the rise of capitalist entrepreneurs as factors affecting 95 the slave trade. No one issue began the change in attitude towards slavery, though the Quakers merit notice for their early condemnation of it. Reform and change came in increments. With colonies sending sugar and other products to Europe, Great Britain could hardly abolish slavery without serious adverse effects on both European and Western Hemisphere economies. There were also at the time a substantial number of people who sincerely believed that Africans in the Americas lived a better life as slaves there than they would have as slaves in Africa. The evil lay in the slave trade, not slavery itself. Nonetheless, Great Britain called for abolition of the slave trade. End the traffic in human beings, and eventually slavery itself would end. Meanwhile, slaveowners would be compelled to take better care of their slaves since the supply of new slaves would cease. Two major leaders in Great Britain emerged as strong advocates for the abolition of the slave trade. Thomas Clarkson was a lifelong abolitionist whose 1787 pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition,” provided data on the moral and social injustice of the slave trade. It was Clarkson who had published the shocking illustration of the cargo capacity of the Brookes. William Wilberforce founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, better known as the Anti-Slavery Society. As a member of the House of Commons, Wilberforce sponsored one anti-slave trade bill after another. Clarkson and Wilberforce, along with Granville Sharp, Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, and the younger William Pitt, aroused the conscience of a nation. In 1807 Parliament passed a law abolishing the slave trade. From that time on the resources of the British Navy were used to end contraband trade, and Parliament used its influence and political power to compel Spain and Portugal to end slave trafficking. The year 1807 marked a major turning point in the campaign against slavery, but the struggle to end slavery itself remained to be won. In the Americas the United States, Portugal’s Brazil, Spain’s Cuba and Puerto Rico, and other European possessions still permitted slavery. It would take almost another century before the nations of the world finally outlawed slavery, and even then, in specific areas and in “exceptions to the rule,” the buying and selling of human beings would continue into modern times. 96 For Further Reading Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (1997). Curtin, Philip D. The African Slave Trade: A Census (1969). Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966). Klein, Herbert S. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (1986). Mannix, Daniel P., and Cowley, Malcolm. Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518-1865 (1962). Pope-Hennessy, James. Sins of the Fathers: A Study of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1441-1807 (1968). Rawley, James A. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A History (1981). Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (1997). Tannenbaum, Frank. Slave and Citizen: (1946). The Negro in the Americas 97 CHAPTER 7: COLONIAL BRAZIL Had it not been for some contrary winds, all of South America might have become Spanish territory in the 16th century. After all, both Spain and Portugal had agreed to the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Line of Demarcation. Spain would sail west to the Indies, though concerns were being raised as to whether Columbus had reached the Far East. Portugal would follow the sea route it had pioneered down the coast of Africa and east across the Indian Ocean. But the treaty did not take into account the shape and size of yet undiscovered land, nor the sailing ships that steered their way at the mercy of the winds. It was such a wind that blew Pedro Alvarez Cabral far to the west of his intended course in 1500. He sighted land to the west that Portugal would declare (not without some argument from Spain) lay east of the Line of Demarcation. Over the next three centuries Portugal would more than make good on that claim. To be sure, Spain and Portugal shared a similarity in culture, religion, heritage, and language. Both countries went through Roman, Moorish, and Reconquest periods. By the early 16th century they had become early modern European nations with similar societies. A Spanish hidalgo held the same status as the Portuguese fidalgo. Still, there were significant differences. The Portuguese had considerable experience in fishing, maritime commerce, and voyages of discovery, and in those activities acted much more sympathetically and respectfully to mariners than did the Spanish. As a rule seamen occupied a very low level in Spanish society. The Portuguese put their biggest cities on the seacoast; it is no accident that the very name Portugal stems from oporto (the port). Portuguese-founded colonies featured seacoast cities, though they were also a land-based society with great estates. Another significant difference lies in Portugal’s reliance on trade rather than conquest of peoples in the lands they encountered. The Far East spice trade, tropical export agriculture (especially sugar), and the slave trade had Portuguese dealing with rulers of kingdoms in Africa and Asia rather than attempting to conquer them. The Portuguese had more and longer experience with African slavery than did the Spaniards and early on almost monopolized the slave trade at its African points of origin. 98 In fact, the geographical proximity of Brazil and Africa gave Africans an important role in Brazil both in its colonial and national periods. The Portuguese tended to be a more tolerant society than was Spain. Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain found a haven in Portugal, and those who nominally converted to Christianity were an important element in Portuguese commerce. By contrast, the New Christians (Jews who converted to the Catholic faith and could thus remain in Spain) were looked upon with great suspicion by the Church. Whereas the Spaniards claimed jealously to guard their “purity of blood,” the Portuguese seemed much more tolerant in their willingness to mix with other peoples. Above all, Portugal was a very small country, and during the colonial period it tried to operate on three continents at once. It could not match Spain in its concentration on Mexico and South America. Apart from the Philippines and Guam, Spain made no impact on Asia. Portugal retained the island of Macau (off the coast of China) until 1999 and did not grant Angola and Mozambique their independence until 1975. A Portuguese outpost was kept at Goa until taken over by India in the 1950s, and Portugal fought off the Dutch for control of trade in the East Indies (now Indonesia) until 1750. For decades after Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal, the Portuguese did not know how to go about colonizing this unexpected territory. Brazil seemed to have great potential, but for what? The interior was an infinitely complex land of tropical rainforest, semiarid scrubland, arable land, and a coastline that invited urban settlement. But no precious metals would be found until gold was discovered in 1695. Development required that something there be grown, produced, or traded. The native peoples of Brazil, whose societies varied between sedentary and nomadic, did not offer much help.. They lacked the strong tribute system of the Aztecs and had no tradition of slavery or, taken as slaves, how to survive as captives. For most of the 16th century and longer in some places, the Portuguese stuck close to the coastline. Early Brazil was a string of oceanside settlements, a contrast to the Spaniards who went far inland and started main settlements on cool plateaus. Brazil’s interior seemed uninhabited except for Indians who kept curious adventurers out until 99 European weapons superiority pushed them back. It was a forbidding country, apparently uninviting to settlement or development. If Brazil was to function as a colony, its exports would have to be tropical products, and trading locations therefore followed Portuguese traditions and were located on the Atlantic seaboard. The first commodity that attracted Portuguese attention was the dye yielded by the Brazilwood tree, useful for coloring the textiles produced in Europe. To spices from the Far East Portugal now had another viable tropical export, and the Portuguese hoped it would compare with the ivory and gold obtained from its African trade. The king of Portugal let out contracts to individuals to trade in Brazilwood. Somewhat shrewdly, the contract specified that contractors had to discover so many new leagues of coastline per year, a policy the Portuguese successfully followed in their southward exploration of the African coast. A considerable trade soon developed, but no settlements in the sense of towns were founded. Portuguese factors (from which is derived the modern term “factory”) traded European products for lengths of Brazilwood logs, then stored them for the date when ships would come to take the logs to Europe. The factories-outposts and storehouses-were usually located on off-shore islands rather than the Brazilian mainland. The natives, who had not used Brazilwood among themselves as a trading commodity, had to learn its value from the Portuguese. The factory traded knives and axes to the Indians and told them the correct lengths to be cut. Before long the trade had depleted the best Brazilwood areas along the coastline. Some penetration of the interior would have to be made. By 1530 there were still no permanent Portuguese settlements in Brazil. The slow effort invites comparison with Spain in the thirty years following 1492 as Spaniards formed their institutions and patterns of occupation, and laid plans for the conquest of the mainland. The only Portuguese settlers at this point were some outcasts living among the Indians. They would later serve an important purpose as interpreters and intermediaries, playing a more significant role than their counterparts in Spanish areas. The Portuguese seemed to adapt quickly to life among the Indians. More shipwrecks occurred along the Atlantic shore, so more castaways survived by living with local tribes. Portugal also took the 100 opportunity to banish undesirable people such as convicts from the homeland to Brazil. John III decided in 1530 to make up for lost time by colonizing the entire coastline of Brazil at once. Between 1530 and 1550 he employed the donatario system, drawing upon a medieval land policy already proven successful on the Madeira and Azores islands. He divided Brazil into twelve captaincies and assigned them to private individuals. The captaincies were hereditary and had extensive judicial and administrative powers. Noble, prominent, and well-connected people, with the personal resources to carry out colonization projects, received the appointments in a curious combination of private capital and government sanction. The plan to colonize the entire coastline at once was audacious at best, and realistically could not hope to succeed. Grantees really did not have the resources needed to make the captaincies work. Other colonizing nations followed the practice of setting up one settlement, getting it well established, and proceeding from there. Of the twelve captaincies, four were never settled, and four were settled for a short time only. The remaining four led to permanent settlements, and two of these, Sao Vicente and Pernambuco, proved important over time. Pernambuco’s captain, Duarte Coelho, merits notice, largely because he committed considerable capital into the venture. By 1575 Coelho’s son was operating fifty sugar mills and exporting more than fifty shiploads of sugar a year. His example, however, was exceptional rather than typical. Portuguese colonists soon found obtaining provisions on their own presented serious problems. They had to adapt to a new soil and climate in which European plants might or might not thrive. It seemed much easier to barter with the Indians for food, and they soon became used to manioc, a root that could be made into meal. It soon became a staple food for the Portuguese rather than European wheat. Seeking to expand their economic base, the Portuguese turned to the cultivation of sugar cane. The northeastern provinces of Pernambuco and Bahia after 1550 were dotted with sugar plantations known as fazendas (large estates). The Portuguese and Indian Labor 101 With no capital available to build mills or import slaves, the plantation owners attempted to barter with the Indians for their labor. The indigenes, however, were not interested in doing back-breaking work in return for the lengths of copper wire the Portuguese used to tempt them. Desperate for labor, the Portuguese quickly moved from buying captives from friendly Indians to going on slave raids themselves. Actual Indian slavery became more prominent in Brazil than in the Spanish colonies, but it was a poor second to African slavery. African slaves were more skilled and lived longer in captivity than did the Indians. The mortality rate among Indians from European diseases was shockingly high. The native peoples of Brazil may have had tribal names unfamiliar to North American ears-Tupinamba, Tamoio, Guarani, Aimore, and many others, but the tribes illustrated a tremendous diversity in geography and culture. The Portuguese, secure in the belief of their time that their European culture and Catholic faith were far superior to whatever the Indians might possess, simply ignored native religious beliefs. They considered the Indians lazy for not working beyond acquiring life’s necessities, and they condemned ritual cannibalism, going around naked, infanticide, and other practices without ever attempting to understand why the Indians performed such activities. The Portuguese presented their alternative to the Indians: accept Catholic Christianity or accept the “just” wars that would be waged against them, the survivors put into slavery to labor on the plantations. Jesuit missionaries opposed the slave-hunters but had their own agenda for Christianizing the natives. They brought them from the interior to aldeias, villages under religious supervision, offering such inducements as fishhooks, axes, and beads. Once in the aldeias, there was little difference between native work obligations and slave labor. Tens of thousands were thus brought under Portuguese control, and tens of thousands died, from European epidemics of smallpox, measles, and 102 influenza; from two centuries of war; and from being worked to death on the plantations. Trapped by the beliefs of their time, the Jesuits could only commit the souls of the Indian dead to the blessings of heaven and work hard at bringing still more Indians down to replenish the numbers lost. Jesuits fought settlers over control of the Indians, even as they approved the importation of African slaves. The Portuguese fought hostile Indians, usually with the aid of Indian allies. Indians, motivated by vengeance and long-standing tribal rivalries, joined the Portuguese to war against other tribes. Besides the excuse of just wars, Portuguese settlers obtained slaves through “ransom” expeditions-allegedly buying slaves from tribes but often as not taking captive the native sellers as well. The success of the Brazilian colony came at a heavy price to its original inhabitants. Whatever the economic effort made by the Portuguese-Brazilwood, tobacco and sugar plantations, cattle raising, gold mining-Indians lost their land, their independence, and their lives. The Portuguese Crown approved slavery for Indians taken in just wars, a policy that amounted to selective slavery under government supervision. Of an estimated two and a half million Brazilian Indians in 1500, only about 100,000 remained at the beginning of the 21st century. The Dutch in Brazil The growth of European markets for sugar overwhelmed the Atlantic sugar islands after 1550, inviting plantation development in Brazil. To replace the unreliable and mortal Indians, Portuguese sugar planters began to import African slaves through the connection to Angola. By the early 17th century African slaves constituted a majority of the population in northeastern Brazil. The region’s warm climate and proximity to Europe made it perfect for sugar cultivation. Portuguese settlers came to set up cities, create fazendas, and start an oligarchy similar to the Spanish encomenderos in their control of the town councils. Into this embryonic colony came the Dutch in 1624. Unhappy under the repressive rule of Catholic Habsburg monarchs, the Protestant Dutch had successfully broken away from Spanish rule around 1580. The Netherlands (Holland, Belgium, and Flanders) was organized as a confederation of states represented by the States-General, a parliamentary 103 body that dealt with foreign affairs and defense. Before long this minor country became a major player in world politics, especially through its powerful navy. The Dutch soon had bases of operation and outposts in southern Africa, the East Indies, North America, and the West Indies. Having established a successful East Indies Company, the States-General created the West Indies Company to operate in the Western Hemisphere. The West Indies Company (WIC) looked around to found a colony and to set up trade with that colony, but apart from what became Dutch Guiana and some Caribbean islands, the pickings seemed slim. However, Brazil offered a possible target. Portugal’s young King Sebastian had died on a myopic crusade against the Muslims in 1578; his great-uncle Henry, already an old man, lasted only two years and died without heirs. Philip II, King of Spain and related by blood to the Portuguese royal family, successfully claimed the throne of Portugal. For the next sixty years a Spanish Habsburg monarch would rule over both kingdoms. In 1621 Philip III died, and his son, Philip IV, was only sixteen years old. Here was an opportunity for the Dutch to move on Brazil. The Dutch had no love for Spain and its navy, and the government, along with Dutch pirates, harassed Spanish ships crossing the Atlantic. The Portuguese Brazilian colony could expect little help from Spain. Initial Dutch attacks captured a section of the Pernambuco coast. Then, in 1628, Admiral Piet Heyn captured the silver fleet sailing from Mexico, providing a treasure that gave the WIC the prestige and power necessary to establish itself as a colony at Pernambuco. Dutch troops enlisted the help of the Tapuya Indians to fight the Brazilian creoles, and by 1637 the Dutch claimed success in making New Netherlands a permanent colony. The States-General appointed Johan Maurits as governor-general of the colony. An enlightened and intelligent administrator, Maurits spent the next seven years clearing out the remaining resistance to Dutch rule, and established good relations with Brazilian creoles, Dutch Jews, and the Tapuya. He made the town of Recife the capital of Pernambuco, brought in artists to paint the local scenery, encouraged immigration, and promoted the sugar industry. Under his administration the Dutch conducted the first scientific studies of the tropical region’s diseases and plant remedies, its flora and fauna, and its geology. Maurits set up an aviary, zoological and botanical gardens, and the first European-founded astronomical 104 observatory in the Western Hemisphere. The WIC held monopolies on the slave trade, dyewood, and munitions, but the colonists were free to engage in all other trade. Maurits reduced taxes, and bankers extended liberal terms to sugar planters. None of this was to last for long. In 1641 the Dutch were at their peak of world power, with fur trading posts on the Hudson River and Delaware Valley in North America, fortresses in Dutch Guiana, strategic Caribbean islands including Aruba and Curacao, slave trading posts in the part of Angola taken from the Portuguese, and sugar colonies in Brazil. All of these territories placed a great strain on the resources of the StatesGeneral. When Brazilian colonials revolted in 1645, the WIC underestimated the seriousness of the revolt. It took the colony for granted-until the rebels won several surprising victories. The new king of a restored and independent Portugal, John IV, at first tried to conciliate the Dutch, then lent support to the rebels by sending them supplies and weapons. Competing fleets fought on the high seas until both sides were exhausted. In 1645 the States-General took over the responsibility of supplying materials and troops from the WIC, but the New Netherlands colony despaired when the States-General adopted a policy of austerity. Dutch morale plummeted as soldiers’ pay was in arrears and supplies were delayed. When the supplies arrived, they were inadequate. The once-proud Dutch troops lost more battles. Then came the Battle of Taborda in 1654, with the Portuguese soundly defeating the Dutch. Their surrender marked the end of New Netherlands. Subsequent attempts to retake Pernambuco failed. In 1660 England became allied to Portugal through marriage, and the States-General faced the reality of dealing with England in any more fighting with Portugal. The Dutch were allowed to evacuate their settlements, some going to New Amsterdam, including Dutch Jews who would begin a Jewish presence in North America after 1654. Even New Amsterdam was not secure, as in 1662 England took over that colony and renamed it New York. Could New Netherlands have worked as a colony carved out of Brazil? The Dutch colonists were looked on as intruders, and above all they stopped short of a full commitment to the sugar industry. In any event, the colony never had a chance fully to prove itself, as threats of war 105 were almost constant. Had the States-General given greater support to the colony, a heavily indebted WIC might have been successful in the long run. But by the late 1640s the government had had enough of the venture. Amsterdam, capital of the strongest province in the Netherlands confederation, withheld any further support, hamstringing the StatesGeneral. The Amsterdam merchants considered Pernambuco a morass and refused to spend any more funds on it. The Dutch presence in Brazil helped awaken the first nationalist sentiments of the Brazilian creoles. Much more than the Portuguese, they had fought a war and won a victory. Brazilians could boast they had defeated a European power, one that had liberated itself from a Spain that in turn had controlled Portugal. The victory thus weakened geographical, social, and color barriers in Brazil and helped create a psychological and social unity. Portuguese settlers began thinking of themselves more and more as Brazilians. Some Dutch legacies could be seen from their Brazilian adventure. Recife had been a village of some 150 houses in 1624. When the Dutch departed thirty years later, they left a small but growing city of 2,000 houses and the beginnings of an urban commercial class in Brazil. Brazil, Angola, and Portugal in the 17th Century Portugal derived much of its wealth from Brazil in the form of sugar plantations. As it became known that Indians proved a poor source of labor, the Portuguese increased the importation of African slaves from their outposts in Angola. It seems curious that the Portuguese came to condemn Indian slavery while supporting the African slave trade; the question seems to have been rationalized by the view that African societies, like those in Europe, had a tradition of slavery. Along with this view was the economic imperative of slave labor needed in large numbers on the plantations. It was an easy step for the Portuguese in establishing the slave trade from Africa to the Azores to move it across the Atlantic to Brazil. As other nations established sugar colonies, they too took a more active part in the African slave trade. Once a rare luxury, by 1600 sugar was becoming an item of general consumption in Europe. Its production began in the Mediterranean area, 106 then to the islands in the Atlantic, across to the Brazilian mainland, and also to the Caribbean islands. By 1650 Pernambuco and Bahia were the world’s largest sugar producing regions. The value of Brazilian sugar was almost as much as Spanish silver. 250 sugar mills in Brazil produced enough sugar to load 300 ships annually for Europe. Dutch pirates seized so many that Portugal had to follow Spain’s earlier lead in setting up a convoy system to protect the ships. As the number of Brazilian sugar plantations grew, so did the demand for slave labor. In the 17th century some 15,000 slaves a year went from Africa to the Brazilian northeast on a passage lasting between 30 and 45 days. Mortality among the captives was high, though not as bad as on longer voyages. Most of these slaves came from factories (slave markets) in Angola and Congo, the rest from ports elsewhere on the west African coast. Unlike Spanish colonies, Africans became a majority of the population in northeastern Brazil. The type of slavery differed significantly from slaves in the Spanish colonies where they mainly worked as domestic servants. In Brazil, slaves were used chiefly in the backbreaking labor of sugar cultivation. Later on Cuba and other islands adopted the plantation system and imported hundreds of thousands of African slaves to work there. African slaves became ethnically mixed; that is, owners found it to their advantage to buy slaves from different areas that spoke different languages. This cut down on the possibility of slaves plotting revolts. It also compelled the slaves to learn the language of their masters in order to communicate with them. However, plantation slaves became far less acculturated than would have been the case had they worked as domestics or for artisans. Their isolation from the dominant society enabled many of them to preserve their language and culture, at least for a time. If unable to plot rebellion, slaves could and did try to run away. For Brazilian slaves, a vast area in South America offered possible refuge. Fugitive Africans hid in the interior and tried to establish quilombos, communities organized on the lines of African kingships. Eventually authorities would track them down, destroy the quilombos, and return the survivors to the plantations. But one quilombo lasted for more than fifty years and had a population of 20,000 people. 107 Plantations were located so as to provide the greatest economic advantages. Planters set them up near the sea for ease of transporting the sugar, and also in close proximity to sugar mills. Powerful landowners leased sections of land to lavradores (tenant farmers) who often had their own slaves. Sugar plantations operated on a grand scale, a practice made necessary by the large outlay of capital, freight costs, the price of slaves, and other expenses. Sugar mills used between 100-150 slaves per mill; tenant farmers had about thirty. The dependence upon African slave labor in the sugar industry was complete. Most of the plantation slaves were male, though there were also female field workers. The men usually lacked a sexual outlet as owners claimed the women for themselves. There seems little concern during the colonial period for slaves as human beings. Purchased as property, many were worked to death. Seven years on the plantation before death from overwork or disease was about average. The work was seasonal in nature, meaning that harvest time required long hours of fiendish, arduous labor; other times, slaves might have little to do. Not all slaves worked in the fields. Plantation life, whether Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, or Dutch, all had basic similarities. Within the casa grande (the big house of the owner) masters had mammies raise their children and employed trusted servants as confidants. The men put their white women on a pedestal and were promiscuous with their female slaves. Loving luxury, planters always seemed to be in debt despite the income from their products. Sugar plantation commerce was export oriented, intensive, and based on a foreign slave labor supply; and in Brazil, slavery continued until 1888. Even with the importation of African slaves, Portuguese settlers still needed more laborers for their plantations. Despite the lack of success in forcing Indians into slave labor, they persisted in sending out slave raids well into the 17th century. The city of Sao Paulo became famous for its expeditions into the Brazilian interior. These expeditions became known as bandeiras, after the flags carried on them, and those who went on them were called bandeirantes. In effect, bandeiras operated as mobile communities, exploring and raiding for upwards of two years in all directions from the coast. They even stopped to plant crops on their way into the interior, harvesting them on the way back. Bandeira ventures were 108 semi-commercial; investors at home shared in the profits. In many ways, the bandeirantes resembled the French metis, the courier du bois who explored the interior of Canada, and the early frontiersmen who penetrated the unexplored regions of British North America and the early United States. One important difference remained: bandeirantes combined exploration with slave raiding. These slave-raiding expeditions were most extensive and profitable in the first half of the 17th century, a time when the Dutch controlled part of Angola and thus curtailed the Brazilian opportunity to buy African slaves. Indians did not accept conquest passively. They knew the jungle and fought fiercely for their freedom. But the bandeirantes learned the ways of the forest, which plants yielded edible foods, the use of canoes, learning native languages, and practicing slash and burn agriculture. They also wielded a technological superiority in their weapons. Muskets of the 17th century were deadlier than their counterparts of a hundred years earlier. Slave-hunting declined after 1650 when the Dutch left Brazil and the African trade was restored. Bandeirantes then put more effort into the search for mineral wealth, an effort that at last paid off when gold was discovered in 1695. An Important Portuguese Leader on Three Continents During the 17th and 18th centuries Portugal operated its empire on three continents, Europe, South America, and Africa. The economic and political connections Portugal established between these areas called for capable bureaucrats familiar with their problems and issues. One important bureaucrat, Salvador de Sa, exemplified the role of career diplomat and politician on all three continents. As a colonial official, de Sa symbolized the dependence between Portugal, Brazil, and Angola, as well as connections between Portuguese Brazil and Spanish South America. His mother Spanish, his father Portuguese, de Sa married a rich Spanish widow but made his own fortune by owning extensive properties, sugar plantations, and slaves. His career called for him at various times to be an explorer, admiral, and politician. 109 As a young man de Sa went on bandeiras and traveled across the Brazilian pampas (plains) region to visit the Spanish mines at San Luis Potosi. He learned Indian languages, fought against the Dutch occupation of Angola and its seizure of the west African slave market, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean at least eighteen times on various missions. His political opportunity came in the late 1630s when Portugal successfully revolted against Spanish Habsburg rule and once against asserted its independence. Under John IV, founder of the House of Braganza, de Sa served as governor of the Rio de Janeiro province, siding with the Jesuits against the paulistas (residents of Sao Paulo) who went on bandeiras. De Sa became a member of Portugal’s Overseas Council and was an adviser to John IV. Given command of a fleet of ships and made an admiral, de Sa attacked the Dutch in Angola in 1647, then was instrumental in ousting them from Brazil. Salvador de Sa was not a particularly popular person as an administrator. He practiced nepotism, giving jobs to many relatives, and as governor imposed harsh taxes on the province’s citizens. But no one doubted his administrative abilities. The Crown made him captain general of the South in the 1650s, a powerful rank, but he may have gone too far with his nepotism, taxes, and various controversial and expensive projects. He went back to Portugal where he made the mistake of choosing the wrong (that is, losing) side in a political dispute, but he finished his life in the 1680s as once again an adviser to the Overseas Council. He was a major figure in the retaining of Portuguese colonies against Dutch aggression and in the development of the Brazilian sugar industry. As a human being, he embodied the contradictions of the time in opposing Indian slave labor even as he participated in the African slave trade. The Golden Age of Brazil For decades the Paulista bandeirantes had penetrated the interior of Brazil looking for Indians to be taken into slavery, searching for gold and emeralds, and in the process exploring previously unknown territory. They finally found gold in the Minas Gerais region in 1695. News of the discovery prompted a major gold rush, the creation of Villa Rica which quickly evolved from mining camp to city, and a gold rush society that 110 resembled other great historical gold rushes-Alaska, Australia, California, South Africa, and others. They were all characterized by lawlessness, the need for mining codes, attempts to establish government, and developing better and more efficient methods of extracting gold. Unlike the gold rushes of other nations, Brazil owed some of its treasure to the king of Portugal, who was supposed to get his royal quinto (20%)-or at least to try to get it. Inevitably there were clashes betweeen those who were first on the scene and those who came later. The Paulistas, the initial discoverers of the gold fields, resented the emboabas, the later arrivals who soon outnumbered the Paulistas but wanted their share. By 1705 the quarrel had escalated to the level of a civil war that had to be put down by government forces. Antonio de Albuquerque, a noted Portuguese leader in Minas Gerais, helped settle the differences. Then a new issue caught their attention. Their mother country had gone to war. Between 1702 and 1713 England and France fought the War of the Spanish Succession, a protracted power struggle to determine who would rule Spain after the demise of Carlos II who had died without heirs. As an ally of England, Portugal was automatically an enemy of France. In 1708 the French sent a fleet and a landing party to Rio de Janeiro. Initially defeated, the French came back with reinforcements and captured the city. Hearing this news, Antonio de Albuquerque urged the Paulistas and emboabas to settle their differences and unite against the common enemy. While Albuquerque led an army to relieve Rio de Janeiro, the cowardly governor paid the French a large ransom to get them to leave. Denied a battle, Albuquerque nonetheless was a popular leader, and he later became governor of the Rio province. Further gold discoveries saw new towns created and demands for churches, doctors, taxes, and European (white) women. Much of the gold produced went from the miners directly to their Negro and mulatto mistresses and to prostitutes. Diamonds were also discovered, but the Crown clamped down quite firmly on their sale, believing (quite rightly) that a diamond glut could depress the European market price. Settlement of the interior proceeded slowly after long delays, but by the 18th century a cattle industry had developed in the Bahia backlands. 111 Portuguese explorers, prospectors, and settlers continually advanced west of the Treaty of Tordesillas line set back in 1494. The 1580-1640 period when Portuguese had lived under the Spanish monarchy had been an opportune time for this expansion, since there was no apparent conflict if both nations had the same ruler. As the movement continued into the 18th century, both nations became concerned over possible clashes over their South American boundaries. The diplomats went to work and in 1750 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Madrid. Jesuits, colonists, Paulistas, all were unhappy with the new boundaries, but bandeira movements were pretty much over by then, and Spanish presence east of the Andes had been minimal in the area claimed by Portugal. Conflict would later erupt over the boundaries of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina, but this was more a legacy of the colonial era than a part of it. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire The usual stereotype for Portuguese colonialism is quite unlike Spain, as the image is of Portuguese intermarrying freely with no color bars or prejudice. Actually, Portuguese attitudes varied widely according to time, place, and people. In Brazil the colonists tried to enslave Indians, with the clergy trying to protect them. A color line existed for Indians until the 1750s, and beyond that for persons of African blood. In Angola, the clergy discriminated against mulattoes and held them to inferior ranks in the Church. Angola attracted few Portuguese women, and the Catholic priests had to deal with Africans content with their Muslim faith. Slave trading dominated Angolan society, making native Africans fair game for the European entrepreneurs. Like other colonizing nations, the Portuguese were susceptible to racial and religious prejudice. However, the chances for manumission (a master freeing a slave) were better in Brazil than in English, French, or Dutch colonies. The Portuguese permitted religious worship to a degree beyond other slave-holding nations. Brazil’s native-born mixed-bloods became an aggressive group, spreading into the interior, looking for ways to make a quick fortune. Brazilians clashed with Spaniards to the south and with Jesuits in Paraguay and the Amazon region. Throughout its 112 colonial period Brazil raised a people who were aggressive, flexible, and with a growing sense of their differences from their mother country. No middle class existed in Brazil, and white women were scarce. Ironically, as time went on it seemed Brazil was becoming more prosperous than Portugal. Colonial wealth went to Portugal, but the mother country could not supply the goods needed by the colonists. Smuggling became widespread during the colonial period, and colonists resented heavy taxes and duties. By 1750 signs were appearing of colonial discontent that would lead to eventual separation and independence. 113 For Further Reading Boxer, C.R. The Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654 (1957). Boxer, C.R. The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750 (1962). Boxer, C.R. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 14151825 (1963). Boxer, C.R. Salvador de Sa and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola (1952). Hemming, John. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (1978). Marchant, Alexander. From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500-1580 (1966). Moog, Vianna. Bandeirantes and Pioneers (1964). Morse, Richard M., ed. The Bandeirantes: The Historical Role of the Brazilian Pathfinders (1965). Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (1985). 114 CHAPTER 8: FRANCE IN THE AMERICAS At the time that Columbus set sail in pursuit of the Indies, France was more interested in its rivalry with Austria, Spain’s ally in European power politics. Their mutual target was the Italian peninsula. Its citystates, opposing each other commercially and artistically, offered a prime target for French or Austrian control. Not until 1861 did Italy become a united nation. After Spain and Portugal divided up the “New World” and the riches of the Indies in the Treaty of Tordesillas (as brokered by Pope Alexander VI), a generation passed before the French thought over this arrangement. The issue became one of considerable concern when Spanish conquistadors began sending home large amounts of gold, silver, and other Aztec and Inca treasure. Given the territory that increased in size with each new report from some explorer, it seemed logical to the French that Spain could not possibly control all the new-found lands, and that the native peoples there could not all have known about Spain or accepted its authority. So the French came up with some interesting policies regarding the lands of the Western Hemisphere. One was the “Doctrine of Consent” which declared, “That which touches all must be approved by all.” In other words, unless the Spanish or Portuguese were operating in a given area, that area was open to some other country for exploitation-namely the French. The French also had the insight to notice that the Pope hadn’t consulted any native peoples in the framing of the Treaty of Tordesillas. That being the case, the French developed a policy of working with the native peoples, not conquering them. In fact, their relationships with the Indians offer an interesting contrast to the attitudes and policies of the Spanish, Portuguese, and (later) the English. For example, the French took the view that the Indians they encountered were nomads and not inhabitants of the lands where they lived. They therefore considered such lands terra nullius, uninhabited land, and claimed the right to expand into such lands. However, although the French never recognized aboriginal title to land, they did respect territorial integrity-the actuality that native peoples obviously lived and hunted in specific areas. This view created 115 considerable ambiguity in land ownership and loyalty. In the view of the king of France, Indians were his subjects; from the Indian perspective, they saw themselves as sovereign allies of France. A preferred policy that worked for the French in dealing with the natives was le douceur, roughly translated as “friendly cooperation.” This policy was practiced successfully where it worked to mutual advantage. But it didn’t stop the French from wiping out the Caribs whom the French considered deadly enemies, or joining Indian allies in elminating the natives of St. Christopher Island. As will be seen below, the Iroquois, hereditary enemies of the Huron, fought the French because the Huron had become allies of France. In the 18th century the French waged a bloody war against the Fox tribe in the Great Lakes because the Fox blocked the French move westward in North America. Early French Explorations in North America The first king of France to take an active interest in the Western Hemisphere was Francis I (ruled 1515-1547). In the 1520s Francis patched up his differences with Carlos I of Spain over European territorial disputes with the Peace of Cambrai (1529). Francis I then became curious about the New World. Five years earlier Francis I had commissioned Giovanni Verrazano, one of those Italian seamen who, like Columbus, were always looking for a sponsor. In 1524 Europe was abuzz with speculation concerning Magellan’s epic effort to circumnavigate the globe. Verrazano, whose reputation makes him closer to being a pirate than a navigator, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and sailed along the coastline of North America. He may have gone as far south as North Carolina, and he did enter New York Harbor and saw the Hudson River (which is why the Verrazano Bridge is named for him). He went on to explore the New England coast before returning to France. His subsequent fate is uncertain; Indians in the West Indies may have killed him in 1528. In 1534 Francis I sent out another explorer on a more ambitious expedition. This was Jacques Cartier, a respected navigator who may (or may not) have been with Verrazano on the earlier voyage. At the time, Europeans believed in global geographic symmetry. If Magellan had 116 shown the way to a Southwest Passage through the strait named for him, then surely there must be a Northwest Passage through which ships could cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific above Canada, and from there to the riches of the Orient. Modern knowledge may excuse this mistaken 16thcentury view of the world; explorers as late as the 1870s were still trying to breach the Arctic ice and believed in such nonexistent places as the Open Polar Sea. Anyway, Cartier came to North America by way of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and his first belief as he headed up the St. Lawrence River was that it might lead to the Pacific Ocean. He sailed up the river as far as the site of present-day Montreal. Francis I hoped for reports of gold and precious metals just as Spain was getting from Mexico and Peru. Cartier saw no mineral wealth, but he met some Indians who traded maize (corn) with them. This was the first maize the French had ever seen. An Iroquois chief agreed to send two of his sons with Cartier back to France to bring back a report on the French claims about their country. Cartier returned the next year and, amazingly enough, brought the two boys back safe and sound. It was on this trip that he formally named the bay and river after St. Lawrence on the saint’s day. The French colonization attempt came with Cartier’s third voyage in 1541. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River as far as the present location of Quebec, but again he failed to find any precious metals. The Iroquois, their suspicions aroused as to French motives, became hostile. Cartier finally gave up and returned to France, his attempt at founding a colony a failure. For almost two decades the French made no further attempt to explore or start a colony in North America. In the meantime, the Protestant Reformation in Europe cracked the Catholic monolithic hold on France. Gaspard Coligny, a Huguenot (French Protestant), rose to power. In 1562 he endorsed the idea of a Huguenot colony in North America and assigned the task to a fellow Huguenot, Jean Ribaut. Ribaut took a small group of men to the coast of South Carolina and there built a small outpost, Fort Charles. But its 26 inhabitants abandoned the place when Ribaut returned to France. Three years later Ribaut tried again, this time setting up Fort Caroline, on the St. Johns River, just south of the modern boundary between Florida and Georgia. The presence of this fort intruded on 117 Spanish territory. An alarmed Spanish government sent Pedro Menendez de Aviles to deal with the French and set up a Spanish outpost in northeast Florida. Menendez made short work of the French settlers, killing all of them. He then established the settlement of St. Augustine, a strategically important but sparsely populated town that bears the distinction today of being the oldest European-founded city in North America. The French got the message and made no further effort to establish a colony so near to Spanish territory. A few years later France became embroiled in religious and domestic problems that culminated in a major religious civil war. Francis I died in 1547, replaced by his son, Henry II, who married Catherine de Medici of the famous Italian noble house. They had three sons, and when Henry II died in 1559, the eldest son, Francis II, became king. He lasted long enough to marry the controversial Mary Queen of Scots, herself a teenager, then died at age sixteen in 1560. Catherine de Medici then placed her second son, Charles IX, on the French throne. A pliable puppet, the young king agreed to his mother’s plot to remove the Huguenots from France. On August 24, 1572-St. Bartholomew’s Eve-the French started massacring their Huguenot neighbors. The war lasted more than fifteen years and kept France out of the Western Hemisphere until the next century. French Intrusions in Brazil While Cartier was trying to find a source of wealth in Canada (and missing the possibilities of the fur trade), French explorers challenged Portugal for trade in Brazil. The Portuguese had neglected their claim to the east coast of South America, and the French took advantage of Portugal’s minimal colonization effort. Word had gotten out about the commercial value of Brazilwood, a tree whose wood yielded a highly marketable dye for the growing clothmaking industry in Europe. France claimed that freedom of the seas and free trade gave them the right to trade with Brazil, and anyway, Portugal had not obtained the agreement of the native peoples there for colonization. By the 1540s France was dealing actively in the Brazilwood trade. 118 In dealing with the native tribes, the French employed policies the Portuguese either did not think of or else rejected; but the policies worked well for the French. One idea was to exchange gifts and hostages, a system that demonstrated to the Indians that the French were showing considerable good faith. Actually, the hostages the French placed with the Indians usually were outcasts and orphan boys from low-level society. Whatever their status, the idea worked well, in North as well as South America. The Indian hostages went to France and were exposed to French society and customs (as well as disease). The French hostages intermarried and formed kinship ties with the native tribes. Each learned the other's language; by 1547 the French had published a Tupinamba language glossary used for trading purposes. As a result of these policies, France did well in the Brazilwood trade. French traders made no effort to interfere with native customs. They even tolerated the practice of cannibalism, treating the natives on their own terms. But the French never attempted any real settlement in South America. The Portuguese managed to keep their claim to Brazil, if only at a minimum level. Return to Canada The religious wars in France ended when Henry of Navarre, a leading Huguenot, converted to the Catholic faith and became Henry IV, founder of the Bourbon dynasty. Born a Catholic, converted to Protestantism, then back to the Catholic faith, Henry IV seems to have used religion for his political ends and to do it well. He issued the Edict of Nantes, granting religious toleration to France’s Huguenots, and so put an end to the conflict that had ravaged the country for almost twenty years. French interest in Canada revived, and Henry IV promised a monopoly in the fur trade to some of his old army friends, most notably Samuel Champlain. In 1603 Champlain was 36 years old and a veteran soldier, traveler, and explorer. On a visit to the Spanish Empire he had seen how the Indians were exploited. He developed the idea of honest trade and cooperation with the Indians. Champlain was a busy man; he crossed the Atlantic Ocean a dozen times in his service to France. As governor of 119 New France (what the French called Canada), he governed “by France, but for God.” At first the French struggled to survive in the early settlements. Scurvy became a serious problem, solved when Champlain noticed that the Indians did not fall victim to the disease. What were they doing that the French were not doing? He observed that the Indians boiled the bark from a certain tree and drank it as a tea. Although Champlain didn’t know about ascorbutic acid or Vitamin C, he deduced there was something in the tea that stopped scurvy. The French settlers drank the tea, and the scurvy symptoms went away. In 1608 Champlain founded a settlement at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River. He and his men gained knowledge of Upper Canada, and the Great Lakes region, following rivers and making arduous portages (crossing land from one river to another, carrying all supplies and equipment). Under Champlain French investors made a good profit from the fur trade. French traders set up posts to trade with the Indians who sold their goods for European manufactured items. Unfortunately and probably unintentionally, Champlain polarized Indian-white relations for the next 175 years. He traded with and sided with the first Indians with whom he made friends, the Hurons. This powerful nation was a hereditary enemy of the Iroquois, and when Champlain provided the Huron with firearms, he drove the Iroquois into the arms of the English who were starting to colonize the Atlantic seacoast. Henry IV was assassinated in 1610, leaving a son, Louis XIII, still a child. Cardinal Richelieu acted as regent, and Champlain lost monopoly control of New France to a new group of court favorites. The French investors wanted all the profits of the fur trade without putting forth a royal effort-a very frustrating situation for Champlain. In 1615 Champlain retired to Quebec, where he died twenty years later. He left Quebec as a major outpost of France, his efforts to some degree unappreciated by the nation he served. Lake Champlain, between New York and Vermont, is named for him. The river leading from the lake to the St. Lawrence River is the Richelieu River. Without the leadership of men such as Champlain, the French government made some costly miscalculations. French explorers, for example, did not head north from their Canadian operations. This left an opportunity for the English to follow up on Henry Hudson’s discovery of 120 Hudson’s Bay. By the 1680s the English had established an outpost in Hudson’s Bay and issued a charter to the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company (still in business after more than 320 years). Over time the French would feel boxed in by the English to the north and south of New France. Interesting to note, “Canada” was not a concept either for the French or English. The western half of modern Canada was not settled or much explored by the French, and its provinces such as British Columbia and Alberta would not federate until the 1860s when Canada became a selfgoverning Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations. Another factor working against French colonization in Canada was the fact that few French women emigrated there. In their absence, Frenchmen married Indian women, and their children were called metis. Many metis became the frontiersmen and couriers du bois (literally, runners through the woods) who would guide others into the Canadian interior. After the War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1713, the English, who had captured and retained the Acadian Peninsula, distrusted its French-Canadian inhabitants. In the 1750s the English forcibly moved many of the Acadians out, sending them to Louisiana, where their descendants are known as Cajuns (a corruption of the word Acadian). Overall, New France never really became a true colony. It operated as a company on a large geographic scale, with an emphasis on commerce, not colonization. New France, headquartered in Quebec, became the major center for the fur trade, a term the French generously defined as including not only fur-bearing mammals but also walruses and whales (for their oil). The native peoples served as fur trappers, processing the furs and bringing them to outposts where the furs were traded for European goods. French Exploration of the Mississippi Valley By the mid-17th century the French had explored around the Great Lakes and were dealing in furs and trade goods with the Indians. As they moved into what they claimed was terra nullius, they mapped the lakes, mountains, and rivers. There were many explorers and expeditions, but several achieved great fame and prominence in their own time as well as a place in history textbooks. In the 1670s the French looked south to the 121 Mississippi Valley whose river was the largest in what later became the United States. Its huge watershed included as tributaries the Missouri and Ohio Rivers and the many streams that fed into them. The French wanted to explore, map, and claim the vast region and the wealth the fur trade would bring to them. Geographic knowledge in the 17th century was still crude. Many people believed a river could flow in four directions from an interlocking source even though it could easily be demonstrated that this was a physical impossibility. Distances in North America were continually underestimated. The statements of Indians were either believed or accepted skeptically, the French conceding that language difficulties made it easy for misunderstandings, distortions, and lies to confuse interpreters. Also, many Indians just wanted Europeans to go somewhere else, so they told them what they wanted to hear. The task of exploration was made most difficult by the ignorance of everyone regarding the unknown. Vague boundaries, unknown rivers and mountain ranges, and cartographical errors all contributed to disputes between Spain, France, and England in North America. Spain had founded Santa Fe around 1610; the English, Jamestown in 1607; the French, Quebec in 1608. Despite the great distances between these three settlements, the European nations could see it was only a matter of time-a century, perhaps only decades-when they would be bumping into each other. The maps of North America drawn in the 17th and 18th centuries show enormous territories claimed by the English on their maps, the French on theirs, and the Spanish on theirs. Seldom did such maps conform to geographic and political realities. Still, the French determined to explore the Mississippi River from its headwaters as far south as they could get before running into the Spaniards. Two great expeditions stand out in the 1670s and 1680s: the work of Marquette and Joliet, and the effort of La Salle. Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest with a talent for learning native languages, learned of a “great river” during a meeting in 1668 with the Illinois tribe. These Indians had been pressured by the powerful Sioux nation to go north and east to the Lake Michigan area, where they met Father Marquette. Louis Joliet, a fur trader, received a commission from Count Louis de 122 Frontenac, the governor of New France, to explore the route of the great river. In 1672 Joliet and Marquette formed a team to accomplish this goal. On May 17, 1673, the two set out for a river known only by rumor. Indian guides took them and a few other men by canoe. They paddled down Green Bay to Fox River, up the Fox near its source, and then by portage to the headwaters of the Wisconsin River. A week later they were on the Mississippi River, the first Europeans to see the “Father of Waters” since de Soto’s disaster in 1542. They headed south and made it as far as the juncture of the Arkansas River to the Mississippi. Hearing there were Spaniards in the lower Mississippi region, they turned back and were at Green Bay by September, having covered 2,500 miles. Marquette, in poor health from the exertions of the trip, died on May 18, 1675. Joliet fared better, winning an appointment from Frontenac as royal cartographer and getting an estate by the St. Lawrence River. Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, was born in France to a rich merchant family and was educated by the Jesuits. At age 23 he went to Montreal, became involved in the fur trade, and learned Iroquoian and other Indian languages. Like Marquette, La Salle heard stories from the Indians of a great river running to what the Europeans were convinced was the Vermilion Sea. La Salle, in his innocence of North American geography, thought the Vermilion Sea might be the Gulf of California. If so, it would be easy to go from Quebec to China! After making several expeditions to the Great Lakes country, La Salle, with Governor Frontenac’s blessing, determined to build on Marquette and Joliet’s work. He hit on the idea of erecting forts and trading posts along the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River. This would not just be a feat of exploration, but it would help end commercial rivalry. The Iroquois wanted to trade with the Dutch and English in New York; French control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries would keep the Iroquois in the French orbit. On August 7, 1679, La Salle and his lieutenant, Henri de Tonty, sailed to Green Bay on the Griffon, a ship built on the Niagara River. They established several forts and dealt firmly with hostile Indians. In 1682 La Salle started down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and then went all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. He named the Mississippi River Valley “Louisiana” for his monarch, Louis XIV. For all 123 this, his rewards were few: for some reason Frontenac cancelled his contract. La Salle went to France and appealed his case to Louis XIV who had the rights restored and helped him get four ships and 400 men to set up a post at the mouth of the Mississippi River. La Salle’s new expedition started in 1684. He faced many problems, among them sickness and desertion, but his biggest error was in miscalculating the longitude of the Mississippi River delta. He had descended the river, but he couldn’t find its entrance into the gulf-a maze of swamps and bayous. La Salle overshot the delta, lost three ships, and ended up at Matagorda Bay, Texas. Still looking for the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle had more bad luck. His ship was wrecked, leaving only 36 survivors. When he tried to head north by land to meet Tonty in Illinois, three of his men murdered him. Eventually the Mississippi delta was accurately located, and in 1718 an outpost was founded there and named for Philip, duke of Orleans, the regent for Louis XV. The first residents of New Orleans included French convicts, German indentured servants, and African and Indian slaves. Cotton, sugar, indigo, rice, lumber, and furs became important products brought to the town, and New Orleans developed into a social center during the 18th century, even creating a local aristocracy. The French influence in the founding of St. Louis, Missouri, should also be noted. It was established as a trading post on February 15, 1764, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, with the Illinois River (leading to the Great Lakes region) just thirty miles to the north. Technically, St. Louis was in Spanish territory, since France had ceded Louisiana to Spain after the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. But few Spanish officials or settlers came to this remote outpost, and French influence persisted there. The French also founded some other outposts along the Mississippi River, most notably Kaskaskia in Illinois. For all the success of its explorations and the dedication of its explorers, France could have done better in its operation of the fur trade. French bureaucrats clung to Quebec as its major center for exporting furs. As a result of this policy, furs collected in the Louisiana country had to be sent out through Quebec, not the much closer New Orleans, increasing time, distance, and cost-and reducing profit. But by the time of the founding of St. Louis, this no longer mattered, since France gave up its North American colonies after the French and Indian War. 124 French Colonies in South America and the Caribbean France (along with Great Britain and the Netherlands) did succeed in gaining a permanent foothold in South America. At around the same time in the early 1600s, these three nations established colonies in northeastern South America, creating the “three Guianas.” French Guiana became a French colony in 1667, and it has been under French control ever since. In 1946 French Guiana became a department of France, a raise in status similar to a U.S. territory becoming a state. During the French Revolution in the 1790s, the revolutionary governments began sending political prisoners to French Guiana. In 1854 a formal prison system was set up there, with Devil’s Island being the most notorious prison, earning lasting fame for its inmate death rate and difficulty of escape. Some 70,000 people were sent to French Guiana’s prisons between 1854 and 1945 when they were at last closed. The most important French colony in Latin America was Saint Domingue, in the western half of Hispanola. The eastern half, Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) remained under Spanish control. France gained control over the region gradually during the 17th century, and Spain formally recognized the French colony in 1697. The main economic activity was cultivation of sugar, and French planters brought African slaves to work on the plantations. Coffee and spices were also grown. By 1788 almost half a million African slaves lived in Saint Domingue, as compared to some 80,000 French colonists. France made more money from this colony’s sugar production than it did from the Canadian fur trade. With the news of the French Revolution and its slogan of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a slave revolt broke out that resulted in the creation of an independent nation, Haiti, in 1804. Unfortunately, no one, least of all the slaves, had been prepared for the challenges of self-government, and for the next 200 years the nation’s history would be one of dictatorship, misery, and brutality. Other French-controlled islands in the Caribbean remain with France to the present day and are departments in the French nation. Martinique, colonized in 1655, and Guadalupe, also colonized in 1655, 125 had plantation economies. Another island, St. Christopher, saw French and English settlers arriving there in 1624 and starting sugar cane plantations. The British took over St. Christopher at the end of the War of the Spanish Successon, one of the four major wars fought between Great Britain and France between 1689 and 1763. What Might Have Been By the 18th century a French writer noted about the fur trade, “The extent of the benefits we have drawn from the New World are incredible. Without this trade, France’s standard of living would not have risen as it did during the previous two centuries.” The French had worked hard at developing a positive relationship with the native peoples of the Americas that contrasted dramatically with the attitudes and policies of England and Spain. What France did not do, however, was create a true colony, either in New France (Canada) or Louisiana (apart from the trading centers at Quebec and New Orleans). In the absence of French women coming to North America, it wasn’t possible to replicate “Old” France in New France. What France did have was a successful operation in the fur trade, based largely on exchanging European products for furs at isolated outposts where Indians brought the pelts. Of course, this policy of “friendly cooperation” meant that the native peoples of North America, and Brazil to a lesser and very brief extent, could continue with their customs, language, and culture essentially intact. Even with their growing dependence on European products and the dangers of disease, the spread of which no one understood, the native peoples played the role of allies to the French, not conquered peoples. When France lost out to Great Britain in 1763, the “might-have-been” of Indian-white relationships in North America was ended. 126 For Further Reading Armstrong, Joe. Champlain (1987). Costain, Thomas B. The White and the Gold: The French Regime in Canada (1954). Eccles, W.J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1983). Eccles, W.J. France in America (1972). Edmunds, Walter D. The Musket and the Cross: the Struggle of France and England for North America (1968). Jaenen, Cornelius J. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1976). Morgan, Ted. Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent (1993). Morison, Samuel E. Samuel de Champlain, Father of New France (1972). Nute, Grace Lee. Caesars of the Wilderness (1943). Trudel, Marcel. The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663 (1973). 127 CHAPTER 9: ENGLAND IN THE AMERICAS News of Spain’s interest in the Indies attracted little notice from the other nations of Europe. France was interested in Mediterranean politics; the king of England was far more concerned with solidifying his hold on his crown. Henry VII had defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, bringing an end to the Wars of the Roses. Richard III’s ambitions are much better known through literature than history, as Shakespeare made him one of the theatre’s classic villains. One of Richard’s dark deeds was to order the murder of the two sons of the late Edward IV, Richard’s oldest brother. Richard had already removed his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence, from the scene. But the “little princes” remained ahead of Richard in the royal line to the throne. So he ordered them killed. After Henry VII (of the “Red Rose” Lancaster side of the war) defeated Yorkist Richard, stories surfaced that one or both of the little princes had somehow escaped death. Ambitious kingmakers were presenting teenage boys as the “real” king. These imposters had to be dealt with, as well as diehard supporters of the Yorkist faction. Henry VII therefore had little time to spend on Pope Alexander VI’s line of demarcation or the Treaty of Tordesillas. However, he did send mariner John Cabot across the northern Atlantic to see just what it was out there that Columbus had found. Cabot sailed down along the Atlantic coast of North America in 1497 and reported the area offered nothing to attract England. Henry VII then ignored the Western Hemisphere while Spain continued to send explorers, conquerors, and colonizers. Following the death of Henry VII in 1509, his son, Henry VIII, became king of England. Like his father, Henry VIII had other concerns than any curiosity about the Americas. During his long reign (he died in 1547), he was involved with European power politics, broke with the Catholic Church to found the Anglican Church of England, was married six times (the split with the Church was due largely to its refusal to grant him a divorce from Katherine of Aragon, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella), and collected the wealth of the monasteries his agents closed down. 128 Henry VIII had three children by three of his wives. His successor, Edward VI, was the youngest (males go first in the royal succession), but he ruled only briefly, dying in 1553. His death brought Henry’s elder daughter Mary to the throne. Mary had remained a devout Catholic and attempted to restore the faith to England. Opponents were liable to be, and many were, burned at the stake for heresy. Mary married Philip II of Spain and for awhile thought she was pregnant; but this unhappy queen, nicknamed “Bloody Mary” for her repressions, was not pregnant, and Philip soon returned to Spain. Mary’s death in 1558 put her younger sister Elizabeth I on the throne. She had carefully stayed out of any controversy during her sister’s reign, for Elizabeth was Protestant. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was a dangerous time to have prominent religious views, for Protestants and Catholics had little tolerance for each other’s religious beliefs. Mixing religion and politics could make for a dangerous brew. The French religious civil strife of the 1570s and 1580s, and the Thirty Years War that devastated Europe from 1618 to 1648, are historical markers of this intolerance. Unlike her Tudor predecessors, Queen Elizabeth recognized England for what it truly was: an island nation, not attached to Europe. At the start of her reign England had just lost its last claim to territory in France, and Elizabeth let it go without a fight. She saw her nation’s future as a country of trade and traders, and to that end supported the development of a navy to protect her merchant ships. Elizabeth avoided the many proposals of marriage to keep her continental rivals off balance, and she played a careful diplomatic game with Spain that enabled her to avoid a conflict with that nation until 1588. She was also a silent partner in the voyages made by English seamen who were little more than pirates. Elizabeth did not give financial backing to exploratory expeditions or colonization attempts. These were mainly privately financed and could, and often did, cost a person his entire fortune. But Elizabeth did have the power to authorize expeditions. It was this royal permission that gave investors the incentive to raise capital and recruit potential colonists. During Elizabeth's reign there were several attempts to establish colonies in the New World, all unsuccessful. She did far better in her endorsement 129 of men such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake who preferred raiding Spanish settlements to starting colonies. Drake’s voyage of 1577-1580 proved one of the most important of the 16th century, possibly even rivaling the voyage of Columbus that had opened the Americas to Europe in the first place. He sailed across the Atlantic, made the difficult passage through the Strait of Magellan in the belief that South America might be connected to Antarctica, a view finally made obsolete early in the 17th century when Dutch seamen rounded Cape Horn. He then went up the Pacific coast of South and North America, looting Spanish settlements along the way. In June 1579 Drake spent three weeks at an undetermined location on the Pacific coast that may have been just north of San Francisco Bay. Scholars argue to this day as to his exact location. We do know from his log that he repaired his ships, claimed the area for England as Nova Albion (“New England” in Latin), and, before he left, set up a “plate of brasse” affirming his claim. Rather than return the way he had come-sensing the Spaniards would be waiting for him at the Strait of Magellan-he sailed west, stopping at the Philippines for water and taking on a load of spices at the Moluccas Islands. Then he continued west across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and was back in England by September 1580. Drake’s voyage had many consequences for England and the other nations interested in the Western Hemisphere, not to mention the Americas as well. Spaniards were baffled by his voyage since he had slipped unnoticed through the Strait of Magellan. So he must have come through the Northwest Passage, or found the Strait of Anian, or someplace like that, and Spain wanted to know how he had done it. Because of Drake’s voyage, England learned more about the world and increased its interest in Far East trade. Philip II was understandably unhappy about Drake’s actions, considering him nothing more than a pirate, and demanded he be punished. Queen Elizabeth knighted him instead. In the 1580s tensions grew between England and Spain. An earlier generation of historians called Drake, Hawkins, and their ilk “Elizabethan sea dogs.” This nickname carries a sense of romance and adventure, an image conveyed through old Errol Flynn films such as The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood. Modern historians know 130 better. England was pushing Spain to the edge of confrontation with its aggressive actions. Before the confrontation erupted into warfare, however, England did make some attempt to set up colonies along the Atlantic seacoast of North America. The Lost Colony of Roanoke Of several English attempts to start a mainland colony, the “lost colony” of Roanoke is perhaps the most famous. Sir Walter Raleigh, a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth, invested a considerable part of his fortune in the venture. It isn’t clear what he hoped to gain from a colony, but many Englishmen believed until well into the 17th century that the Atlantic coast of North America might yield a treasure of gold as Mexico and Peru had done. In 1585, 108 men sailed to Roanoke Island off the coast of South Carolina to establish a settlement. Two years later 117 more people, including seventeen women and nine children, came to Roanoke. The governor of the little colony, John White, was a talented artist whose sketches of the settlement provide a visual look at Roanoke. Governor White’s daughter was married to one of the colonists, and on August 18, 1587, she gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Virginia Dare. Ten days later, Governor White left Roanoke, returning to England. White knew the colony had some serious problems that needed Raleigh’s attention (and more money). The site selected for the settlement was not the best, as the harbor was too shallow for larger ships. The colonists had run short of supplies and needed more. There were problems with the local Indians. Unfortunately for White and the colonists, England had much greater concerns at the moment than one little colony. The Spaniards were planning a major cross-channel invasion with a huge fleet, the Armada, to conquer England. With the help of a major storm that scattered the Spanish warships, and superior English seamanship, England won the day. After 1588 Spain never again challenged England's supremacy on the high seas. But it was 1590 before White and additional colonists returned to Roanoke. When they arrived they were shocked to find no one there. No bodies could be found, nor was there any evidence of a conflict with the 131 Indians. All they found was a cryptic carving on a post: the word CROTOAN. No one could make any sense of the word, and no one has to the present day. With no answer to the question of what happened to the Roanoke colonists, any number of theories have been suggested. One of the more logical ones argues that the colonists gave up waiting for a supply ship that never arrived. Badly in need of food and supplies, they went to the mainland. Some Indian tribes in the South, most notably the Lumbee of southeastern North Carolina, have some English names and words in their language. This may be an indication that the colonists joined the Indians and over time lost their language and culture. The tragedy of Roanoke, and other unsuccessful ventures such as Gilbert’s illfated voyage, made English investors realize that no one person could finance a colony. Raleigh had lost a fortune. The solution they worked out to this problem was the creation of the joint stock company, a forerunner of modern corporations. London investors acted as a group, buying shares in a company/colony venture. If it failed, the loss would not be too severe. Despite the lack of success in the first efforts, the English were determined to establish effective colonies in North America, a region the Spaniards had not explored. Drake’s “Nova Albion,” on the other side of the continent, was rejected as too remote. The English tried again on the Atlantic coast. The Founding of Jamestown Shortly before Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, a group of London investors formed the Virginia Company, honoring her marital status. In 1607 the company sent three ships across the Atlantic. They sailed into the Chesapeake Bay area and found a river they named for their new king, James I. Innocent (or ignorant) as to North American geography, some of these colonists believed the James River provided access to the Northwest Passage. This was but one of many errors they made about North America. No sooner were they off the ships than they were running into the forest expecting to pick gold off the ground. No one wanted to build any shelters or plant food crops. The men proceeded to starve in a land of abundance. What was going on? 132 The London investors had recruited their colonists from the “gentlemen” class of society. These were people who did not work with their hands; others did manual labor. A look at the roster of settlers reveals an excess of gentlemen and a dearth of laborers. When the food supplies ran out, the colonists ate their horses, then dogs, mice, and snakes. Then disease killed off many of them. Some of the hungry survivors resorted to cannibalism, and at least one colonist murdered his wife and salted her flesh for food. The dreary episode became known as the “starving time.” The colony was saved by an extraordinary man with an ordinary name: John Smith. A veteran soldier of fortune, Smith brought order out of chaos, decreeing that anyone who wanted to eat would have to work. Although it was close, with most of the first settlers dying, the colony managed to survive. They named their settlement Jamestown, founded in 1607 and still in existence today. Later versions of Jamestown’s survival mixed fact and fiction to create the legend of Smith and Pocahontas. Few colonists knew how to grow crops in the rich Virginia soil. They had to learn the hard way to leach the soil before planting corn. Tobacco worked the other way; it used up the soil so that later crop yields were lower than earlier ones. This meant they had to move to another location after awhile, since scientific farming was unknown to them. Nevertheless, it was tobacco that made Virginia eventually prosperous. In 1616 the colony exported 2,300 pounds of it. Four years later, the export was up to 60,000 pounds and increasing. Ironically, James I detested tobacco. By 1620 the population of the Virginia colony was up to 3,000 people. This rapid increase in population placed a great strain on the region’s food resources. Native peoples in the area were primarily hunters and gatherers. They soon grew concerned over the shrinking numbers of birds and animals as the Europeans blasted away with their muskets. War broke out in 1622, and more than 350 colonists were killed, plus an even larger number of Indians. By 1624 the Indians gave up. They were already outnumbered and outgunned at this early point of English colonial history. The colony’s investors mismanaged and bickered about the colony so much that in 1624 the Crown took over the colony. The governor would be appointed by Parliament, and profits would go to the Crown. 133 The colonists did set up a House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in English America, but it was far from democratic local government. To vote or hold office a person had to be a white male Anglican over age 21 who owned property. These restrictions effectively eliminated most colonists from participating in their government. In 1619 a Dutch ship anchored at Jamestown and unloaded a cargo of people who had been brought against their will-Africans who had been sold into slavery. The slave trade had been going on for more than a century, but these were the first slaves to be brought to North America. At first their status was uncertain, but by 1661 Virginia had enacted its first law on slavery. It would not be the last. Tobacco plantations required many laborers, and since slavery was legal, purchasing slaves for plantation labor seemed cost-effective, especially since labor was in short supply. Free wage laborers could find better opportunities than on colonial plantations. In addition to slaves, plantation owners and other employers of labor found an important source in indentured servants. These were Englishmen (and some women) who saw no future for themselves in England but were willing to sell their labor for the price of transportation from England to North America or to one of England’s Caribbean colonies. The period of indenture varied from as little as three to up to fourteen years, depending on such factors as the price of a ship ticket. Tens of thousands of young, would-be colonists came to America as indentured servants. However, the employers who paid for the ticket often complained that the servant soon ran away, heading for some other place where he could disappear into the population. Black Africans, of course, stood out in a crowd. Slaveowners risked much less with them. In short order the American colonies, as the Spanish and Portuguese had done, took a race-based view of slavery that would have enormous longterm consequences. The Pilgrim and Puritan Colonies The Protestant Reformation spawned a wide variety of sects that ranged from the Anglican Church and its similarity to the Catholic Church, to the rejection by some sects of anything resembling idolatry. Protestants 134 who wanted to “purify” the Anglican Church of “papist influences” became known as Puritans. Beyond the Puritans were some Protestants who wanted to break away completely from the Anglican Church. These people were known as Separatists. They went so far as to leave England entirely and move to Holland. After a few years this group realized it was in danger of assimilation into Dutch society, so back they went to London. Their moving around for religious purposes earned them the nickname “Pilgrims,” and it is as Pilgrims they became best known. Still hopeful of finding a haven where they could worship God as they saw best, and without Anglican interference, the Pilgrims decided to cross the Atlantic and create a new society, not so much a colony as a religious utopia. They chartered a ship, the Mayflower, hired a few soldiers for protection, and sailed in 1620. Before landing they agreed on a set of rules, the Mayflower Compact, by which they would be governed. Initially they suffered tremendous hardships, including disease and starvation. Many died. Too few to confront the Indians, they made friends with them, most notably Massasoit, a leader of the Wampanoag. A successful harvest in the fall of 1621 prompted them to celebrate with a feast of thanksgiving, and they invited the local Indians to take part. The image of the Pilgrims in American history and folklore is generally positive. Children in elementary schools dress up as Pilgrims and Indians, the nation celebrates Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and Mayflower moving vans and Plymouth automobiles strike a resonance in public memory. The same positive sense cannot be said of the Puritans, a cantankerous, bigoted group who drove King Charles I to distraction. Unlike James I, who avoided disputes with other nations, his son Charles rashly plunged England into several unwise wars without the money and motivation to commit his forces totally. He also tried to rule without Parliament, and unsettled economic conditions made him an unpopular king. Religion created additional pressures between Charles and his people. As head of the Anglican Church, and supported by the Archibishop of Canterbury, Charles did little to stop a climate of hostility in England as the country rocked with religious factions, led by the Puritans. They disputed Charles’s claim of a divine right to rule, argued over questions about episcopal vs. congregational church structure, even 135 which way to place the altar table in church. Puritans opposed Sunday recreation and didn't like the revelry and paganism connected with Christmas. Although the Puritans were not persecuted, they did feel harassed, and they finally decided conditions in England were intolerable for them. They devised a clever solution to their problem. Puritans bought shares in one of the companies chartered by the king, the Massachusetts Bay Company, to set up a colony in North America. When they gained control of the company, they organized a massive emigration, and they took the charter with them. Charles unsuccessfully tried to void the charter. Between 1629 and 1635 the Puritans embarked upon the “Great Migration.” Some 21,000 men, women, and children made the journey, effectively transplanting a complete society to their Massachusetts Bay colony. They founded Boston in 1635 and Harvard, to train ministers, a year later. None of this was done for religious freedom as we understand it. They wanted the freedom to worship in their own way. Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and members of other Protestant sects were not welcome. For the rest of the 17th century the Puritans ran a theocratic colony in which there was no separation of church and state. Meanwhile, affairs in England degenerated into civil war and the eventual execution of Charles I. Puritans in England, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, established a Commonwealth with Cromwell as its Lord Protector. The Puritans in Massachusetts remained isolated from these events. They banished dissidents who disagreed with Puritan doctrine, leading to the founding of Connecticut by Thomas Hooker and Rhode Island by Roger Williams. At their most extreme the Massachusetts Puritans became embroiled in the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692. Journalist Henry L. Mencken made a famous definition of Puritanism as “the fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” While the statement is an exaggeration, it denotes a negative image of the Puritans that persists to this day, as when a novel is “banned in Boston” while becoming a best-seller everywhere else. The Puritans had no use for the native peoples they encountered, considering them creatures of Satan, occupants of a wilderness that had to be conquered. They found the biblical story of Exodus comparable to their own circumstances. Yet they believed strongly in education, set up school 136 laws, and led the other colonies in literacy. The dedication to education became a paradox for the Puritans. They wanted their children to be literate so they could read the Bible; but being literate made it possible to read other books. For all the pressure to conform in Massachusetts in the 17th century, it seems ironic that the colony would be a leader in dissent and revolt against England in the 1760s. Subsequent Colonies English monarchs in the 17th century used the idea of colonization to realize potential profits and to pay off debts. When the Calvert family, Catholic by religion, proposed a colony in America as a haven for Catholics, Charles I welcomed the opportunity to rid the country of “papism.” Around 1635 he granted a charter for Maryland (named for his wife), as a proprietary colony run by the Calverts. New Hampshire began under modest circumstances when James I created the Council for New England in 1620 to manage settlement in America. A few proprietors started settlements in the area that was called New Hampshire after 1629. Absorbed by Massachusetts for a time, New Hampshire became a separate colony in 1660. Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, England had no monarch for eleven years. During this period, known as the Interregnum (Latin for “between rulers”), Cromwell ran England, using the term Lord Protector to define his authority, since he was a commoner. Under Cromwell's blessing England grabbed Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 and used it as a base to attack Spanish ships and ports. Jamaica became a rich sugar colony and a major importer of slaves. Cromwell died in 1658, and his son and others lacked the ability to continue the Commonwealth government. The Royalist party gained control and invited Charles I’s son, living in exile in Holland, to return under certain conditions. Charles II acknowledged Parliament’s move and agreed to marry a Portuguese princess to cement an alliance with Portugal. Part of the dowry included land in India, marking the beginning of what eventually became the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. Thus Charles II regained England for the House of Stuart in 1660. 137 The Restoration Colonies No sooner had Charles II become king than England was embroiled in a series of wars with Holland, fought largely on the high seas. However, in 1662, the Duke of York’s fleet sailed into New Amsterdam Harbor and captured the city. England took over the colony and renamed it New York. The Dutch had been interested in the fur trade in the region and had done a little taking over of their own, evicting Swedish traders from the Delaware Valley in the 1650s. Now the English took Delaware over from the Dutch in 1664 and made it another colony. A similar victory occurred in New Jersey which began as two small colonies contested by the Dutch, Swedes, and Indians. Charles II gave it to his brother James, Duke of York, who in turn awarded it to two of his war buddies as proprietors. New Jersey became a royal colony around 1702. South Carolina and North Carolina (“Caroline” was the Latinate form for Charles) began as proprietary colonies in the 1660s, named for Charles II. Of the colonies on the Atlantic coast, South Carolina most resembled a Caribbean plantation colony. It imported large numbers of slaves to labor in the production of rice, indigo, and tobacco. North Carolina, more like the other colonies, eventually attracted large numbers of Scottish-Irish immigrants who were unhappy with British restricitons on their religious and political views. The largest and possibly most significant grant during the Restoration era was Pennsylvania, a region originally occupied by the Shawnee, Delaware, and other tribes. Henry Hudson, working for Holland, visited Delaware Bay in 1609, followed by other explorers. Indians, Swedes, and Dutch vied for control of the region, until England successfully took it over in 1681. The Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, were persecuted for their pacificism and belief in the equality of man. William Penn, a prominent Quaker leader, urged a colonial haven for his sect, and in 1682 the king, who owed the Penn family money, settled his debt by awarding Penn a charter for the land that would be called Pennsylvania-“Penn’s Forest.” Quakers emigrated by the thousands from England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Penn himself arrived in the colony in 1682, made a fair treaty with the Indians, and returned to England. When James II became 138 king after his brother’s death, Penn sided with him, a decision that went against him as James was an unpopular king who was ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Eleven years later Penn was back in the colony, seemingly involved in one controversy after another-government problems, slavery, and piracy. His descendants continued operating Pennsylvania as a proprietary colony down to 1776. The Penns were unusual among English colonists in their belief that the Indians should be treated fairly. They paid the Indians for their lands, and in the periodic warfare that erupted between England and France, the Indian allies of the French left Pennsylvania alone. This of course created jealousy and animosity among the other colonies, but then, they weren’t treating the Indians with much fairness. Pennsylvania Quakers also took an early stand against slavery and the slave trade. The Last Mainland Colony: Georgia The thirteenth colony established by England in North America was Georgia, named for George II, in 1732. Several reasons motivated the founding of Georgia. It would serve as a buffer zone between Spanish Florida and English South Carolina. It was also supposed to solve a persistent social problem in England. Men who could not pay their debts were placed in debtors’ prisons until desperate relatives raised the money to pay the debts. English reformer James Oglethorpe believed debtors should have an opportunity to begin afresh, and what better place than in a new colony in North America? He obtained a charter from George II to set up the colony, and all went more or less well for about nine years, though ironically the expenses of the colony put Oglethorpe himself in debt. Unfortunately, the colonists ignored Oglethorpe’s reformist ideas about no liquor or gambling in Georgia, and of course these were the very problems that had put them in debt in the first place. Georgia became pretty much like the other colonies, bickering about taxes, hungry for land, hostile to Indians, and importing slaves to work on its plantations. England’s Caribbean and Latin American Colonies 139 Europeans began arriving in northeastern South America in the late 1500s, seeing the possibilities there of sugar plantations. The Dutch and French established outposts, and English claims comprised the third of the area called the Guianas. Sir Walter Raleigh had earlier searched in this area for El Dorado, one of those legends about a city of gold, and a conflict with the Spaniards put him in trouble with James I. Raleigh had promised on pain of death that he would avoid border claims in the Guianas with Spain. When a dispute broke out in 1618 Raleigh proved himself an honorable man, and he was executed. British Guiana went on to become a lucrative plantation colony, with Great Britain not abolishing slavery there until 1838. The colony won its independence in 1966 and is now known as Guayane. Jamaica’s becoming an English colony has already been noted. The Bahamas, a complex of islands east of Florida, was originally claimed for Spain but was ignored after Spaniards removed the Indians to Cuba and Hispanola. The English showed up in the mid-1600s and started small settlements. For half a century the Bahamas colonists fought off Spaniards and pirates, and in 1717 it became a British colony. After the American Revolution, many Loyalists left the new United States and moved to the Bahamas where they started plantations and imported slaves to work for them. The date 1838 is important as Great Britain abolished slavery in all its colonial possessions that year. Slavery had been abolished in England itself during the American Revolution. Political Allegiance in the Thirteen Colonies Obviously, Great Britain had more than thirteen colonies when Florida (under British control 1763-1783), Jamaica, British Guiana, the Bahamas, and some other small Caribbean islands are included. But it was the thirteen mainland colonies that would agitate for independence and form the United States. The people of the mainland colonies carried a dual loyalty. The first was an abstract loyalty to the Crown, not to Parliament, and the complaints about Indian policies, unfair taxes, granting of trading licenses, and restrictions on land purchases were directed at Parliament. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 made the break with England’s monarch and didn’t even mention Parliament. Independence meant to 140 chop at the top; anything less would have made the American Revolution a rebellion that would have solved some problems but not others. The second loyalty was to one’s particular colony. Whether a person was a New Yorker, Vermontan, or Massachusetts man could mean quite a lot in matters of colonial boundary lines and how accurately they were surveyed. For example, a colonist living in New York might be requested to pay property taxes to Vermont, and the argument was over the boundary line to see who got the money. Colonial borders did not necessarily match the modern lines of states. Colonists retained a fierce loyalty to their colony and a reluctance to assist other colonies in times of war. This provincialism persisted until the American Revolution when the question of serving in a Continental Army required the thirteen colonies to act as one. 141 For Further Reading Allen, David G. In English Ways (1981). Bridenbaugh, Carl. Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590-1642 (1968). Jacobs, Wilbur R. Dispossessing the American Indian: Indians and Whites on the Colonial Frontier (1972). Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of America (1975). Johnson, Richard R. Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675-1715 (1981). Kupperman, Karen. Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (1984). Leach, Douglas E. Flintlock and Tomahawk (1958). Leach, Douglas E. The Northern Colonial Frontier (1966). McFarlane, Anthony. The British in the Americas, 1480-1815 (1994). Lemay, J.A. Leo. The American Dream of Captain John Smith (1991). Notestein, Wallace. The English People on the Eve of Colonization (1954). Sosin, Jack M. English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II (1980). 142 CHAPTER 10: CHURCH AND STATE IN THE AMERICAS For Gold and God From the beginning of the Spanish invasion of the Americas, priests accompanied the conquistadors. Missionaries went along with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. Spain was a newly united, Christian nation full of missionary zeal, anxious for what today would be called an ethnic cleansing of the country’s Muslims and Jews. The Church did not draw a racial definition of the infidels, however. A Jew or Muslim who converted to Christianity would be welcomed into the Catholic faith, though there might be distrust as to the sincerity of the conversion. Two kinds of priests came to the Americas, secular and regular. Secular priests worked in parishes, usually in cities and towns, and from their ranks rose bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and, ultimately, the Pope. They dealt directly with their Catholic congregations and served less for their religious commitment than for the priesthood as a career. Regular priests (the term comes from the Latin regula, or rule) by contrast carried a very high level of commitment to the faith. They took vows of poverty and were known also as mendicant priests for their lack of worldly possessions. These priests joined monastic orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinians, Mercedarians, and Jeronymites. The most notable order, the Society of Jesus, was founded in 1540, after the initial conquest period, but the Jesuits quickly became the most important of the regular priests. Unlike the monks of the Middle Ages who withdrew from the violence of the feudal era into monasteries, the regular clergy became leaders in the effort to convert the Indians to Christianity. Eusebio Kino and Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (Jesuits), Bartolome de las Casas (Dominican), and Junipero Serra (Franciscan) exemplified the efforts of priests who went to the frontier, defended Indians against slave-hunters, and lived lives of poverty and dedication. During the conquest period the native peoples of the Valley of Mexico proved malleable material for religious conversion. Relieved of 143 the Aztec insistence on human sacrifice to appease the gods, they found Christianity a kinder and gentler faith. It was also the faith that had toppled Huitzilopochtli, Tecazlipoca, and all the other native gods from their pantheon of idols. Interestingly, the Indians saw similar patterns between Christianity and their old faith. Although polytheistic, they could accept the view of one God above all others, especially one that had defeated the others. The old faith had included a hierarchy of priests, convents, feast and fast days, baptism by water, and even rites resembling confession and penance. So a transfer to the religion of their conquerors became a rather easy matter for Aztecs and Incas. In Mexico religious conversion was greatly aided by the story of Juan Diego, an Indian who reported to the local bishop in 1531 that he had seen the Virgin Mary atop Mount Tepeyac. The bishop doubted the story, especially as the Indian claimed she had brown skin. The bishop wanted proof. Juan Diego went back to the mountain, where again he saw the Virgin. It was the middle of winter, but the Virgin gave him a rose bushful of blooming roses. He picked the roses and put them in his robe. When he opened the robe before the bishop, the roses were gone. In their place was the image of the brownskinned Virgin Mary, known to the Catholic faith today as the Virgin of Guadalupe. The story of this miracle spread rapidly and helped persuade Indian converts that the Christian God was not foreign, for the color of the Virgin’s skin was as their own. Finding conversion made much easier by this story, the Church went along with it. Church officials also allowed ritual dances before the altar. Where there was a lack of priests, the padres emphasized fiestas, singing, and dancing-group activities that maximized participation with minimum supervision. They set up cofradias, religious brotherhoods that cared for the church during the absence of priests who made up for the lack in numbers by making the rounds of villages in some areas. Some pagan habits-idolatry and polygamy, for example-the priests found harder to eliminate. Dedicated padres left the duties of city church worship to secular priests and went out to remote frontier regions. Often as not they faced martyrdom from Indians uninterested in hearing about Christ. The padres persisted, gradually winning them over with gifts, demonstrations of European tools, planting European crops, and patient examples of 144 brotherhood. Where successful, they built missions, building complexes consisting of chapel, refrectory, dormitories, storehouses, and corrals. Where there were enemies, strong walls fortified the missions. The Spaniards employed missions as part of a three-pronged settlement of frontier regions, along with presidios (forts) and pueblos (civil settlements). Missions also served as political and military outposts against the rivals of Spain, from Portuguese Brazil to English and French intrusions on territory in North America claimed by Spain. The Jesuits became masters of mission building. They set up missions from Baja California to Paraguay, helped the Indians defend themselves from slave-hunting bandeirantes, and even provided the Indians with weapons. The orders sided with their converts, called neophytes, against exploitation by encomenderos, officials, and other Spaniards. Of course, the Indians had to obey the rules. Once an Indian accepted baptism and became a neophyte, he was not permitted to leave the mission, nor was he expected to continue his old life style and customs. Priests kept the neophytes in dormitories, a practice with two negative consequences: the Indian birth rate went down, and neophytes became quite vulnerable to European diseases. Ignorant of the germ theory and how diseases spread, the priests accepted the mortality rate as God’s will and sought new converts to replace those who had died. After all, European deaths from epidemics of plague and smallpox were of recent memory in Europe. The priests established many successful missions, but at a cost. The Indians got no practice in self-government and no responsibility for their economic life. When King Carlos III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from all Spanish territories in 1767, the mission system fell apart. Indians were powerless to protect themselves from rapacious colonists who wanted productive mission lands. Except possibly for the Franciscans, the monastic orders had little luck in continuing operation of the missions given up by the Jesuits. The famous 21 missions of Alta California were founded in the twilight of the Spanish colonial period. They represent one last burst of evangelical energy. With the independence of the Spanish American colonies from Spain, the missions spiraled into decline, done in by national governments uninterested in perpetuating a system of what 145 appeared to be permanent benevolent despotism practiced by priests on Indians The Inquisition in the Americas Founded in the 15th century, the Inquisition, also known as the Holy Office, was established by the Catholic Church to investigate crimes against the faith. Heresy was considered a cardinal sin, an affront to God, its practitioners subject to severe penalties. The Inquisition found its greatest support in Spain where Ferdinand and Isabella declared a zero tolerance policy on other faiths. In 1569 Philip II issued a royal edict setting up the Inquisition in America. Inquisitors arrived in Lima in 1570, and they became active in Mexico City the next year. Bishops and viceroys welcomed it to counteract self-seeking and lustful priests and to clean up laxity in maintaining standards. This the Inquisition soon did, fining and sentencing priests who had dishonored their vows and offices. But the Holy Office also came to America with a broader agenda. For one thing, the Inquisition functioned as a police court. It tracked down bigamists, robbers, seducers of youths, and various undesirable people. This last category involved Jews going from Brazil into Spanish America, taking advantage of Portuguese laxity; Protestants coming from Dutch and English colonies; and heretics, skeptics, and anyone who dallied with holy doctrine. In the 16th century, the time of the Protestant Reformation, one of the main Protestant goals was to raise literacy rates so that people could read the Bible in their own language. To do so meant that translators had to take a Latin Bible and turn it into English, French, Spanish, Italian, or whatever was the language in a country or region. Translators had to be dedicated to their tasks, for any errors could be attributed to blasphemy, a serious charge that might result in the guilty party being burned alive at the stake. The Inquisition was quite satisfied with keeping the Bible in Latin and had no use for translators. The Inquisition also acted as a censor of books, looking for heretical writings, and plays that might be lewd or irreverent. This pursuit of conformity was not exclusive to the Inquisition or Spain. The 16th and 17th centuries were times of severe religious intolerance. Henry VIII and 146 his daughter Mary in England, the French effort to exterminate the Huguenots, and in the next century, the Thirty Years War, showed how thousands of people died in the name of religion. The Inquisition made Jews living in the Indies a special target. Culturally, the Jews were indistinguishable from their Christian neighbors. They had lived on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, spoke Spanish or Portuguese, participated in the economic life of the region, and were loyal to their monarchs in all respects but one: they rejected Catholicism in favor of Judaism, or, as it was often called at the time, the “Law of Moses.” When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, many did not leave. They were tied to Spain by birth, language, and culture. Practicing their faith in secret, they became crypto-Jews. The Spanish government wanted to keep immigration to the Indies a purely Catholic affair and tried to prevent Jews from going there. Spanish Jews, however, were just as interested in New World opportunities as Spanish Catholics. Estimates of Jews who went to New Spain, Peru, and elsewhere in the Americas are difficult to estimate, but the number may have run into the thousands. Bribery helped officials to look the other way. The issue for the Inquisition was not the identification of a Jew as a person but whether the person practiced the Jewish faith. This was contrary to the laws of Spain, and those found guilty would be punished. Periodically the Inquisition would hold an auto-da-fe, a grand trial at which Jews, relapsed Catholics, and heretics would suffer a variety of punishments. These varied from stiff fines to prison terms running from several months to life, rowing in the Spanish galleys, wearing the sanbenito (a penitent garment identifying the wearer as a sinner) from six months to several years, or a combination of some of the punishments. At the extreme was being burned alive at the stake, with a modicum of mercy allowing strangulation by garrot if the victim kissed the cross. Refusal to do so meant being burned alive. Many Jews did not receive the most extreme punishment, but were penalized according to the severity of the offense, the charge being “Judaizing”-practicing the Jewish faith. The Inquisition had gradations for the offense, the punishment depending upon the degree of observance of 147 Jewish customs and rituals, or the alleged effort to subvert the Catholic faith. Jews fought Inquisition harassment as best they could, in subtle ways such as spitting on images of Christ when alone, or putting crosses under doormats. A Jewish shoemaker might put a cross into the sole of a Christian’s shoe. Jewish awareness of their faith was often concealed from relatives. Some Jews were very observant, whereas others knew only that they rejected Christ in favor of the Law of Moses. They devised ways to fool their Christian neighbors, pleading stomach aches on Jewish fast days, or standing in their doorway with a toothpick in their mouth so as to suggest having eaten on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Inquisition investigators knew all the Jewish holidays and were especially vigilant at those times. The period 1596-1648 marked the high point of Inquisition activity. During that half-century it held a series of auto-da-fes in which some prominent citizens were exposed as Judaizers and punished accordingly. But Jews in the Indies survived the worst times of Inquisition zeal, then prospered when the Holy Office was checked by worldly politics. Years of relative safety alternated with periods of persecution. With the 18th century came an expansion of knowledge, more efficient travel between the Americas and Europe, and a massive increase in the publication of books and periodicals. It became very difficult for the Inquisition to check all incoming books, and they had to deal with bribery and smuggling of such literature as well. Spain’s Bourbon kings were more secular than their Habsburg predecessors and curbed the power of the Inquisition. Ironically, the decline of the Inquisition and the relaxation of persecution and harassment hastened the end of the Jewish community in the Indies. Freed from the threat of religious persecution and exposure, many Jews assimilated, converted, or became agnostics. Isolation from active Jewish communities cost them religious knowledge. Most presentday Jews in Mexico, for example, date their genealogy back mainly to the 19th century. Some of Mexico’s leading Catholic families have Jewish ancestors on their family trees. The Inquisition initially tested the commitment of Indian converts to Catholicism. In its first years of operation in the Americas, it tortured 148 and burned some Indians, but people in both Spain and the colonies protested this action and argued the unfairness of judging Indians by Spanish standards. The Inquisition backed off. After 1575 it left the Indians to the authority of the bishops. Philip II said Indians were not to be converted by force, but instead by “legitimate means.” The Work of the Jesuits As noted above, the Jesuits were the most successful, dedicated, and tireless of the monastic orders. They were noted for their financial integrity and high personal character. Their record is clean as to corrupt priests. Antonio Ulloa, a Spanish official, observed in 1740, “One does not see in them the lack of religion, the scandals and the loose behavior so common in the others.” The Jesuits developed printing presses, studied native languages, made grammar books, built schools, colleges, and universities, and set up libraries. They obtained funds from donations of wealthy and pious people, usually as a death bed bequest, and the donations included land. Consistent with their times, Jesuits saw no apparent contradiction between their defense of Indians from slave-hunters and their own ownership of African slaves. Their industries included flour mills, bakeries, textile factories, potteries, and production of drugs and medicines; this was only a partial list. By the 1760s the Jesuits were also successful bankers and traders and had become the dominant economic power in Spanish America. Naturally, this made less successful people jealous. Government officials saw the Jesuits as threatening their own interests. Jesuit enemies included a virtual roll call of Spanish bureaucracy, including viceroys, governors, and corregidores. The list also had bishops, other religious orders, major landowners, and slaveholders. Secular opponents resented Jesuit economic competition, since religious orders had tax exemptions. Jesuit political views finally caused their downfall. They were always dedicated to the power of the Pope in Rome rather than the monarchs who ruled the lands where they were active. This view was called ultramontanism (literally, “over the mountain”), and regalistssupporters of monarchs-resented their lack of nationalist patriotism. The most important of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs in the 18th century, 149 Carlos III (ruled 1759-1788), wanted no state within a state, and no appeals going over his head to Rome. Informed in 1767 of an alleged Jesuit plot against him (a political ploy used successfully by Queen Elizabeth of England almost 200 years earlier), and noting the fat Jesuit bank accounts and extensive landholdings, Carlos III isued an edict of expulsion. From New Spain to Argentina, and from Spain itself, the Jesuits had to pack up and get out on little notice. With Jesuit missions and landholdings vacated, the way was open for other monastic orders to take over their possessions. The northernmost outposts went to the Franciscans, with the result that Father Junipero Serra would be on the Sacred Expedition to Alta California in 1769, not a Jesuit leader. Other orders, less efficient than the Franciscans, allowed the Jesuit-founded missions to decline. The Church at the End of the Colonial Period In 1800 the Catholic Church in the Americas was prosperous though down in influence. The chief cities and towns had numerous churches and cathedrals, and everywhere there seemed to be monasteries and convents. The religious orders had missions planted in frontier regions. The Catholic Church in the Americas had become institutionalized, a stable force allied with authority and a Hispanic culture. Yet observers at the time viewed the work of the Church with native peoples very critically. One report after another complained that only the exterior features of religion were acquired. Indian Catholicism included a great deal of syncretism-the blending of two or more faiths. Somehow Indian gods had been transmuted into Catholic saints, the Virgin of Guadalupe proclaimed a brown-skinned Mother of Christ, and what had once been pagan festivals had become part of Catholic celebrations. As an enterprise, the Church offered ambitious clerics career opportunities. An archibishop could earn $100,000 a year (in modern monetary values); by contrast, a dedicated frontier priest received between $75 and $100 a year for his expenses. And the Church was rich. Observed Mexican historian Lucas Alaman early in the 19th century, “The total property of the secular and regular clergy of Mexico was not less than 150 half of the total value of the real estate of the country.” Alaman also had little use for what he asserted was the moral decline of the clergy. Tax exemptions and donations from the faithful of money and property had made the Catholic Church in the Americas a powerful institution, but within its structure there was friction and resentment. Top appointments went mainly to peninsular Spaniards, a practice that made criollos envious, though some achieved the rank of bishop after the 1650s. Even less satisfied were the mestizos and the few Indians who became priests but had no chance for advancement at all. When the Wars of Independence came, the Catholic Church was a Spanish institution in America, serving the needs of people who thought of themselves as Americans but resented the inability or unwillingness of a Church that sided with the mother country. Government in the Americas Spain’s role over its American colonies combined an effort at micromanaging every government detail with a frustration over colonial resistance to being regulated. An extraordinary distance existed between law and reality. Time and again the dictates of the Council of the Indies, whether they were the Laws of Burgos, the requerimiento, the encomienda, or some other policy, were ignored by the people those laws were intended to govern. The state played a passive rather than active role regarding its instructions, for after all it rarely provided the funding for the dangerous and often disastrous expeditions into unknown lands. Spaniards came to the Indies for private reasons and impulses, risking their own fortunes and armed only with the authority the Crown gave them to take those risks. The state was content to rake in its one-fifth of the profits. To the average Spaniard in the New World, government was at best a theoretical part of his life. Spaniards had more daily contact with the social, commercial, and economic aspects of settlement. If the settlements they created were in good working order, they could take government for granted. Colonial officials adopted a realistic attitude towards the legislation sent from Spain: Obedezco pero no cumplo-“I obey but do not enforce.” A law sent from Seville could take several months in transit before it arrived on the desk of a colonial official. After 151 letting it sit for awhile, the official could easily find something vague or contradictory in the instructions. Back it would go to Spain with a request for clarification. There it would remain on a bureaucrat’s desk until a response could be formulated, and after more delay the revised instructions would cross the Atlantic again. Thus a delay or one or two years in carrying out a law was not uncommon, and bureaucrats on both sides of the ocean knew how to play the game. Spain set up two agencies to deal with the administration of its New World colonies. The Casa de Contratacion (Board of Trade), organized in 1503, supervised the growing commerce between Spain and the colonies. Located in the wealthy and powerful city of Seville, the Board operated there until 1717, when it moved to the rival city of Cadiz. The Board was charged with licensing ships, ordering their activities on the high seas and abroad, collecting taxes, and caring for the royal share of New World treasure. It had a training school for navigators, mapmakers, and devisers of nautical instruments, and it housed an archive of charts, maps, and ship logs. The Board also maintained a court that had jurisdiction over all cases concerning American trade. A major force in directing Spanish commercial policy, the Board of Trade was not abolished until 1790, a run of almost 300 years. The Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies provided the political arm of Spanish colonial policy. It issued royal edicts and decrees and tried to account for every detail of colonial life. Its goal was to hold the Indies firmly under its control, assure profit to the Crown, protect Indian charges, and safeguard the interests of the colonists. To achieve the near impossibility of these goals, the Council maintained a large bureaucracy. Enjoying high prestige, even in times of royal corruption, and subject in authority only to the king, the Council of the Indies lasted from 1524 to 1834-a period of 310 years. Council bureaucrats knew of the colonial resistance to their edicts. They also knew that colonists faced challenges in placing Indians under Spanish law and offered advice to help them. One adviser suggested that new colonial administrators “not to try and change the customs abruptly and make new laws and ordinances, until they know the conditions and customs of the natives of the country and of the Spaniards who dwell there.” He suggested the official “must first accommodate oneself to the 152 customs of those one wishes to govern and proceed agreeably to them until, having won their confidence and good opinion, with the authority thus secured one may undertake to change the customs.” Council officials seldom bothered to take such advice themselves. The pace of legislation never slackened during the colonial period. By 1635 more than 400,000 edicts were in force, a number so great it was obvious to all that no one could keep track of them. Not only did the Council of the Indies initiate legislation, so did viceroys, provincial governors, and cabildos (town councils). The laws very often conflicted with each other’s jurisdictions and within the jurisdictions themselves. No distinction was made between major laws and minor ones. No reference book existed for easy use. The laws came in one steady stream of ordinances, voluminous and over-specific, recorded (if at all) in the order received. Clerks had no way to determine if a law passed ten years earlier was still in effect. A new law could contradict an old one without repealing it. Under the circumstances, judges in the Indies had to decide each case on its merits, applying general principles of common sense in order to make the system work. In regulating activities, the authorities could go from one extreme to the other. For example, judges could see that laws providing punishments for smuggling might be so severe they would have to abandon an unrealistic policy, only to return to it when smuggling got totally out of hand. Out of this bureaucratic morass of obsolete and contradictory laws came a heroic reform effort. In 1681 the Council published the Compilation of the Laws of the Indies, a compendium that reduced the number of laws to 6,400. Unfortunately, new laws soon increased in number, creating the problem all over again. The Role of the Viceroy At the top of the colonial governmental structure in the Americas stood the viceroy, representing the prestige and power of the king. A viceroy usually received a luxurious welcome with parades of minor officials and churchmen, feasting, and lots of pageantry. A viceroy had private guards, numerous servants, a palace, high salary, and a generous 153 expense account to prevent corruption. His term of office was three years, though there were many exceptions to term limits. The viceroy could not make friends with his subjects, nor could he find a bride in his own territory, lest he become susceptible to her family’s influence. Viceroys could not be involved in private business. These restrictions aside, the viceroy enjoyed great power. He could appoint people to civil and ecclesiastical (church) posts. A sharp viceroy could outflank priests and judges who opposed his decisions, and he could delay enforcing royal commands or even disregard them. He served as president of the audiencia (administrative governing committee) in the area. However, audiencia judges could report directly to the king about the viceroy’s conduct, and many of his appointees could appeal to the king if the viceroy rejected their proposals. A visitador (inspector general) could show up at any time to inspect financial records and hold hearings. At the end of his term he was subjected to a residencia, a judicial review that exposed his entire record to public view and presented an opportunity for his political enemies to take revenge against him. Cynics noted that viceroys had to make three fortunes while in office. The first went to pay for his appointment, the second to support him during his term, and a third to bribe the residencia judges to look the other way from his wrongdoings. Nevertheless, Spain’s monarchs considered the viceroy system a success as those who took the position proved generally hardworking, competent, and obedient. The system lasted for 300 years. During the colonial period Spain set up four viceroyalties in the Americas-five if Brazil is to be counted during the dual monarchy of 15801640. New Spain, established in 1535, encompassed a vast area that took in all of the present-day United States west of the Mississippi River, plus Florida and a disputed area that is now the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (the dispute was with the French). Mexico, Central America (excluding Panama), and the islands of Cuba and Santo Domingo were also a part of New Spain. Theoretically New Spain even stretched as far north as Canada. The capital of this enormous region was at Mexico City. The second viceroyalty was Peru, with its capital at Lima, established in 1542 and taking in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, part of 154 Venezuela, and northern Chile, along with Panama (to use modern national equivalents). Much of this territory was subtracted when the Viceroyalty of New Granada was created in 1717 with its capital at Bogota. The fourth viceroyalty, La Plata, was established late in the colonial period, in 1776. It included part of Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the northern half of Argentina, with the capital at Buenos Aires. It is interesting to note that the most successful viceroys served at the beginning and end of the colonial period. Antonio de Mendoza (15351550) in New Spain and Francisco de Toledo (1569-1581) in Peru served multiple terms and reduced the power of self-serving conquistadors. At the other end of the colonial era, Antonio Maria Bucareli (1771-1774) and Count Revillagigedo (1789-1794) in New Spain did their best to energize a sagging colonial empire. In the two viceroyalties with the longest time spans, 62 served in New Spain and 41 in Peru. But of a total of 170 viceroys in all the viceroyalties in the colonial period, only four were American-born, testifying to the power of peninsular Spaniards in ruling over the colonies. One of those four was Revillagigedo, recognized for his efforts to modernize Mexico City and inaugurate reforms. Indicative of the corruption in the Spanish court near the end of the colonial period, Carlos IV replaced him with a favorite, and the erstwhile viceroy faced a charge of dishonesty. Fortunately for Revillagigedo, the residencia acquitted him. Viceroyalties were divided into smaller administrative units, all subordinate to the viceroy but relatively independent because of distance and slow communication. These included provinces, presidencies, and captaincies-general, run by governors and military officers. Below these were corregidores and alcaldes mayores, officials at the municipal level. Corregidors were initially assigned to protect Indian communities, collect taxes, and preserve the peace. Unfortunately, as a group they committed some of the worst excesses of the colonial era. They pocketed tax money, sold Indian labor to contractors, cheated Indians by buying their products cheaply and selling them as high-priced goods, and forced Indians to buy unwanted items such as silk stockings and eyeglasses. Seeing an opportunity for collusion with local caciques (Indian leaders), the corregidors devised schemes that foretold the treatment of Native Americans by Indian agents in the 19th-century United States. The alcalde 155 mayores, who corresponded roughly with town mayors, weren’t much better and often were worse. Spanish colonial government represented overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities to a degree seldom seen in nations such as the United States with its separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The viceroy and governor positions were basically executive, the audiencia a judicial committee, and colonial councils a mirror of Crown or Council of the Indies. However, everyone, from the Council of the Indies down to the local cabildo, initiated legislation, very often in conflict with each other. Still, with all its problems of corruption, favoritism, and micromanagement, the Spanish government muddled through the colonial period with a fair amount of success. The state gave sanction and authority to Spanish conquests, even as it withheld money and men. A man with a piece of paper saying he was governor of an area yet to be conquered could obtain credit with merchants for supplies and equipment, attract men for his expedition, and maintain discipline, assets a similar adventurer without that piece of paper could not provide. The state also made high office a great social honor. Men of wealth and good position coveted offices from viceroy to cabildo. Such offices enhanced their prestige and influence in the community and offered opportunities for even more wealth. Above all, Spain’s monarchy and government, for all its problems, maintained a stable society through the 18th century. There was some comfort in knowing one’s status in life, whether artisan, gentry, nobility, or peasant (though slaves would not agree with the philosophy inherent in knowing one’s place and keeping it). People at all status levels stood in relation to their titles. So the Spanish government supported relationships such as that of master to servant, Spanish artisan to African or Indian workers. Vagrants knew they would be unwelcome and subject to eviction from communities that would not extend them any hospitality. Yet within this society the distance between law and reality was much more extreme than in Anglo-Saxon society. Everyone, however, knew what was going on; they lived not in a society without law, but in a society where customary law was stronger than any other kind. Since the colonial government was weak in its enforcement of laws, its procedures 156 were also weak. Everyone therefore assured his own rights by getting everything down on paper and having it notarized to avoid litigation. Lawsuits occurred anyway, but they were accepted as part of what it meant to live in a Spanish society. End of an Era By the year 1700, after almost two centuries of conquest, colonization, and transplanting of culture, Spanish rule over the colonies had become rather stale. The Habsburg ryal line died out, and the new royal house, the Spanish Bourbons, attempted to infuse new energy into colonial government. The most active of the Spanish Bourbon rulers, Carlos III, centralized authority and tried to modernize the creaking bureaucratic machinery. He reduced restrictions on trade, made movement of goods easier, and tried to revive the colonial and peninsular economy. As noted above, in 1767 he expelled the Jesuits from all Spanish territory because of their perceived threat to regal interests. Carlos III’s most innovative reform for the Spanish colonies was the intendencia, borrowed from the French intendant system. This administrative position theoretically replaced governors, corregidors, and alcaldes mayores (some 200 officials were immediately fired), and divided provincial areas into twelve intendancias. The Spanish intendants were charged to administer justice, oversee communities, promote business and trade, and organize provincial militias. Unfortunately for Spanish colonial administration, the reform came too late and did too little. Carlos III died in 1788, and his son and heir, Carlos IV, proved an ineffectual ruler. Government bureaucrats were not happy with what they saw as a rival position and did little to support the intendants. Instead of a housecleaning of a stultified bureaucracy, the intendant system just added another layer to viceroys, audiencias, and other government positions. By the 1790s it didn’t really matter, since the colonial criollos were already long fed up with remote and stale government. They were beginning to think of ways to better their own situations. 157 For Further Reading Greenleaf, Richard E. The Mexican Inquisition in the Seventeenth Century (1969). Haring, Clarence H. The Spanish Empire in America (1947). Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition (1965). Liebman, Seymour. Faith, Flame, and the Inquisition: The Jews of New Spain (1970). Lynch, John. Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782-1810 (1958). Parry, John H. The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (1940). Phelan, John L. The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century (1967). Ricard, Robert. The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (1966). 158 CHAPTER 11: ECONOMIC AND INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES The Economy of Spanish America Spain preceded England and France by a century in starting its New World colonies. While the British and French colonies were barely getting organized, Spanish institutions were already firmly planted. At first glance it would seem that the economic system set up by Spain remained essentially the same until the mid-18th century when the Spanish Bourbon monarchs tried to revive stagnant policies. England and France, starting later, were not as inflexible as Spain and were able to take advantage of later economic and intellectual developments. Two considerations should be noted regarding Spain’s economic relations with its colonies. First, Spain was a selfish mother country. Peninsular Spaniards assumed they had the right to make large profits from New World activities. With the risks great, they expected their profits to be worth the effort. Spain also felt such profits should be for Spaniards alone and followed the closed market principles of mercantilism. Second, Spain held the general view that the New World was improved by the bringing over of European skills, technology, plants, animals, and a desire to teach the native peoples the superior European views in matters of religion and culture. The New World may have offered valuable food products to Europe, especially maize and potatoes, but Spain and the other European nations found little to adopt from native peoples. Of all the native languages throughout the Western Hemisphere, only one--Guarani--is spoken equally with Spanish in one nation-Paraguay. Spain’s Use of New World Treasure The question may fairly be asked, What did Spain do with all that gold and silver they so desperately sought? In the long run, the wealth of the Indies did Spain little good and caused serious economic headaches throughout Europe. All gold and silver from the New World had to be 159 registered, and the Crown skimmed off its royal quinto (20%) before the treasure was shipped to the royal mints, where it was made into coinage. Workers in the mints were heavily penalized if they were caught stealing. Contrary to general impression, relatively little fell into the hands of pirates or foreign nations at war with Spain. For much of the colonial period Spain followed the practice of mercantilism, a closed-market strategy by which colonies supplied raw materials to the mother country in return for finished products. France and England also practiced mercantilism. Colonial trade with other nations was prohibited, though this was honored more in the breach than the observance. In receiving New World treasure, Spain actually lacked the ability to compete with other countries in providing the goods and products that colonies needed or wanted. Part of Spain's problem lay in its expulsion of Spanish Jews and Muslims at the end of the 15th century. Many of these people had been merchants, and their economic connections and abilities were sacrificed to the creation of a Christian state. As a result, Spanish merchants had to buy merchandise for the colonies from England, Austria, and other countries, and ship the products through Seville, the city that controlled exports to the colonies. Seville’s control of export trade hobbled other urban commercial development, though Cadiz eventually won royal authority to deal with the colonies. So it seemed that as fast as gold and silver bullion went into Spain, it left the country, and high-priced goods went to the New World through middlemen at Seville. This resulted in widespread smuggling in the colonies and price inflation in Spain and Europe. Hard currency left Spain for religious and political reasons as well. The Habsburg monarchs used the treasure sent from the colonies to defend the Catholic faith against Protestants and Muslims and to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. Carlos I, as Carlos V the Holy Roman Emperor, spent more time in northern Europe fighting Lutherans than he did as Spain’s king. Also, the Habsburgs lived under the illusion that treasure meant prosperity, a dangerous belief as anyone playing the game of Monopoly has found out: cash disappears quickly when one lands on a street with four hotels. The Spanish Court and upper classes lived extravagantly, neglecting economic development. In the end, New World treasure hurt Spain as money went for ostentatious buildings, palaces, 160 monuments, and churches rather than supporting new industries and commerce. In 1934 economist Earl J. Hamilton published American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, a pioneering economic study of the effect of colonial bullion on European prices. Working without a computer, Hamilton made three million calculations on such products as barley, wheat, rye, olive oil, wine, vinegar, spices, and other products, all of which had been affected by a general rise in prices in Spain. Spanish monarchs had no idea what was causing the inflation. They passed a succession of laws that either caused more inflation or at times deflation but which probably did more harm than good to the Spanish economy. The laws certainly did not stop the price rise. Spaniards blamed the inflation on a variety of causes, including bad weather, witchcraft, evil foreigners, the Jews, greedy colonials--in short, they blamed everyone and everything except the real cause, an oversupply of bullion that lowered the price of gold and silver and correspondingly raised the prices of products. Royal Sources of Income The Spanish nobility derived its income from a variety of taxes and other sources, most of which was provided by the colonies as well as the nation’s people. The leading source of royal revenue was the quinto-20% skimmed off the top of New World treasure. Naturally, the 20% figure did not necessarily mean a percentage of the royal total, only a total that was counted. Estimates vary widely as to how much encomenderos, merchants, and anyone else who thought they could get away with it hid what they could from the quinto’s collectors. Other taxes included the almojarifazgo, a tariff on both the import and export of products. Today an export tax can be seen as seriously inhibiting trade with other nations, but the Crown saw it as an income opportunity. The alcabala was a sales tax paid by everyone on top of the price of a product, same as today. Every male under age 55 paid tribute as a head tax for the privilege of being ruled. This was the only tax Indians were required to pay. The Catholic Church tithed everyone (since everyone was supposed to be Catholic, everyone paid). The Crown had bishops collect the tithe and kept one-ninth of it. 161 Other sources of income included the sale of offices, a practice that invited corruption in government but which flourished anyway. Mesada and media ante were kickbacks of anywhere from a month to half a year’s salary to the official who secured the job for the applicant. The king also enjoyed presents and gifts, soliciting or extorting them, depending on his desire for the item. Anyone entering the city of Seville had to exchange any bullion being carried for copper coins or even paper money. The rate of exchange never favored the outsider, and when the person left the city, conversion back into gold or silver was always against him. This legal robbery was the price of doing business in Spain’s outlet to the colonies. The king also collected taxes from the sale of imported African slaves, gunpowder, mercury, legal paper, tobacco, salt, playing cards, and other commodities. Usually the Crown knew that tax collectors would never bring in the estimated amount of money, so he sold the privilege of collecting a royal monopoly to the highest bidder. This guaranteed a sum to the king, though the bidder had to calculate the price of the bid against the anticipated amount of revenue that would or could be collected. Bid too high, and collect too low, and the bidder lost money. The practice was called “farming,” and every European monarch used farming as a source of income, leaving it to the “farmer” to take the risk. Among these many taxes and ways to enrich the ruling class there were some positive notes. Spain had no land tax and, other than tithe and tribute, no income tax. The tax rates were lower in the colonies than in Spain, but it was taxation without representation, and collected by royal agents who were often corrupt, or professional tax farmers who had to work aggressively to make their profit. It should also be noted that these practices were not exclusive to Spain. Every European monarch used some or all of these techniques to create royal revenue. The Colonial Economy Two economies existed side by side in the Latin American colonies. One was the subsistence agriculture of the Indians, to supply food for themselves and for their tribute payments. The other one, Spanish commercial agriculture, grew products for home use, sale in local markets, and export to Europe. Various regions had different agricultural 162 experiences, but some general observations can be made. Grassy plains regions, for example, developed cattle and sheep industries. Caribbean areas and tropical coastlands, especially Brazil, were centers of plantation agriculture. With the drastic decline in the Indian population in the first century after conquest, vast areas of fertile and now unused lands became available for agriculture. Over time the cash value of New World agricultural products actually exceeded the mineral wealth shipped from the mines, except for Mexico. Even in Mexico the total agricultural value of the region’s production was higher in value than the silver ingots sent to Spain. By the 17th century sugar, tobacco, cacao, and indigo plantations were exporting their products, and cattle, swine, horses, and poultry were in full operation for home use. Spain’s Old World products found a new home in the Americas. Farms produced wheat, olive oil, and grapes. Spanish agriculturalists attempted some interesting experiments. Sericulture, the cultivation of silkworms for silk, was initially successful until cheaper Chinese silk came east across the Pacific from the Far East trade. Hemp and flax, important in the production of rope, was exported until Spain’s cordage and linen industries complained of the competition. In the interests of mercantilism, planting of hemp was discouraged after 1600. Tobacco and cacao became important export crops. Sugar, processed into molasses that in turn was made into rum, became an integral part of the Triangular Trade between the Americas, Europe, and Africa. These three products dramatically altered dietary and medicinal practices in Europe. Consumption of sugar rose dramatically throughout the colonial period. Sweetened chocolate became a preferred beverage among the upper classes, and sugar itself promoted the making of new kinds of foods. Stock raising dated to the first voyages of Columbus and the bringing of cattle to Cuba and Hispanola. The livestock industry became one of the great successes of the Americas. Seeing the industry thrive, the Council of the Indies laid out rules for its operation, based on experiences in Spain. Laws specified the size of ranches in relation to the numbers of cattle. The Council also attempted, without much success, to limit the size of the ranches. Stock raisers continued the Mesta, a guild dating to the 13th century, for the sheep industry. It regulated brands, resolved quarrels 163 over landownership, provided a court to settle disputes about cattle, and lobbied for stockmen’s interests. Stockmen also raised mules and horses for transport of goods. Horses multiplied throughout plains areas, as did cattle, since those regions lacked predators. Wild horses were supposed to be royal property, but any effort to enforce this policy was unworkable. After 1596 horses went to anyone who could catch them. Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia became leaders in mule production, as those sturdy animals replaced llamas as beasts of burden in the Andes. Questions of land tenure required the Crown to establish rules. Conquered lands belonged to the Crown, not the conquistadors. The Crown held the right to grant land to deserving people, but it did so on the other side of a large ocean. Granted lands as often as not were not surveyed and had unclear boundaries. Such uncertainty invited many abuses and lawsuits. Ambitious men could use the laws and political connections to their advantage, and within two generations following the conquest the pattern was set for the formation of haciendas, as the great landed estates were called in New Spain, and latifundios, as they were known in South America. Indians wanting to escape the burden of encomienda and repartimiento service found a refuge of sorts as peons on the haciendas, where for most of the colonial period they were exempt from encomienda service. Ambitious owners aggrandized their property by consolidating smaller grants into larger units. A large hacienda might contain several estancias (small ranches). For the successful hacendado, bigger was better: permanent structures, dammed streams for irrigation, and plenty of workers. It took considerable capital to develop a hacienda, and they continued to grow in size with each generation. This resulted in an inevitable conflict between hacendados and native communities over questions of land ownership. Initially grazing land was common land to which Indians had rights and privileges. For instance, cattle could be placed on cultivated land only after a harvest. Over centuries, however, the Indians gradually lost their rights, and the hacendados took over Indian land in a process that was greatly accelerated in the late 19th century in Mexico. Native loss of land became one of the basic causes for the Mexican Revolution of 1910. 164 At first the Crown tried to protect Indian rights, but by the 17th century the Spanish Habsburgs were desperate for money. One way to get it was to sell absolute titles for a fee. This practice enabled many landowners to legalize an imperfect land title. Their urge for land was not necessarily for productive use. Successful hacendados saw extensive landownership in medieval terms: the size of the estate measured the prestige of its owner. Much of the hacienda land was left unimproved. Conflict also developed between hacendados and encomenderos, though sometimes the same person held both positions. An encomendero who had not acquired land found his encomienda Indians going to the haciendas where, though they might become permanently in debt, at least had some guarantees of stability. Even mestizos went into debt peonage. Without land, an Indian could not provide tribute to the encomendero, so it made sense to become a peon and avoid the problem. Much of this sort of dispute sounds very medieval, and in many ways it was. But haciendas could and did grow to large sizes in less settled areas. In northern Mexico, haciendas encompassed hundreds of thousands of acres. Hacendados gained capital for expanding their estates by marrying into merchant families. The rich got richer. Even religious orders got into the act, receiving haciendas through bequests from owners who sought a little insurance for getting into heaven. The Franciscans for a long time resisted the temptation of land gifts, but most orders were not so fastidious. At best the orders practiced scientific farming and were fairer in dealing with peons than the hacendados; at worst they contributed to the growth of land inequity. All in all, a slowly moving trend towards large landed estates continued throughout the colonial period. It could be seen in Mexico by the 17th century; by the 18th century, elite control of millions of acres of land was a stark fact of life. The issue of oligarchical control of land continues to this day in nations such as Ecuador and Colombia. Even the United States has not been exempt from aggrandizement of land by large corporations. The Spanish Fleets 165 In the age of sail Spanish ships could only go where the wind took them. Winds blowing from the east had taken Columbus across the Atlantic to the Americas; the prevailing westerly winds blew him back. These wind currents did not just fill the sails of Spanish galleons. They also provided the motive power for the ships of other countries, and the ships of no countries-pirates. Experienced seamen soon knew the routes any ship would have to take to cross the Atlantic. This posed a problem for the treasure ships in getting back to Spain. Their answer was the convoy system. For Spain the convoy system dated to 1526 when the Crown instructed ships to sail in groups of two or three to lessen the possibility of capture by French or English pirates. By the 1540s Spanish ships were consolidated into mammoth fleets of between 40 to 50 vessels, escorted by warships. Vessels became larger in size and better armed. Naval squadrons patrolled the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Spain. By the 1560s Spain had set up a system whereby two fleets went annually to the Americas, unloading passengers and goods, taking on a cargo of silver and other valuables, and returning in one huge convoy. The months of May and June saw the flota, the first fleet, loaded in Seville under the watchful eye of the Casa de Contratacion, sail down the Guadalquivir River. Warships joined the fleet for the voyage across the Atlantic. Little trouble was expected on the outward voyage. What pirate would want to capture a cargo of farm tools, furniture, and trade goods? The second fleet, the galleons, left Spain in late summer for the Indies. Once in the Caribbean, the ships went to various destinations. Vera Cruz was a main port. From there merchants took the goods to the town of Jalapa, its higher altitude offering a healthier climate, and there held a big trade fair. The goods went from the main town to smaller ones or across to Mexico’s west coast ports for shipment to the Philippines. On the return voyage the two fleets merged at Havana, Cuba, where they waited for the hurricane season to end. Then they left in one large convoy. Since the westerly winds dictated the direction the ships would take, pirates knew where they could intercept the Spanish vessels. The Spanish Main must have seemed like running a gauntlet. Most ships, however, got through. Throughout the entire colonial period only one entire silver fleet was sunk or captured, in 1628. Others suffered damages 166 but managed to escape pirates. Inevitably, some ships came to grief in bad weather or other hazards. Occasionally one of these wrecked ships is located and yields its treasure to modern adventurers. In 1565 Andres Urdaneta established a viable route from Spain’s new Philippines colony (named for Philip II) to the Pacific coast of New Spain. Thus was begun the Manila Galleon trade route. Two galleons a year left Acapulco for the Philippines, loaded with silver and gold coins and trade merchandise. After a layover at Guam (another new Spanish colony) to take on fresh water and provisions, the galleons proceeded to the town of Manila, where they traded their products for Chinese goods such as jade and silk. The return trip to Acapulco took four months. Merchants in Seville resented this Pacific competition and managed to keep the number of ships to two a year, with none allowed to go from Lima to Manila. The Pacific trade continued anyway, both legal and illicit. Spanish ships sailing for the Americas took more than trade items and supplies. About 1,000 people a year went along as passengers, according to Casa de Contratacion records, though many unregistered people probably went to the Indies as well. Passengers were a widely varied lot: a ship might take wife deserters, unattached women, former convicts, debtors, officials, merchants, farmers, servants, clergymen, artisans-all sharing crowded quarters for between two to four months. They spent their time reading aloud (a great way for illiterates to learn about things), singing, playing games, holding religious services. This constant stream of immigrants probably did more to perpetuate Spanish culture in the Americas than did all the officials and laws. The Spanish economic system had many faults-the defects in mercantilism, the inability to supply manufactured products to the colonies, the inability to stop smuggling. However, it functioned for 250 years and more, at times doing well, other times poorly, but maintaining a way of life for people in two hemispheres. Intellectual Trends 167 Spanish culture was passed on to the Indies during the colonial period, but on arrival it absorbed enrichment from Indian and African cultures, plus modifications due to isolation and environment. Still, Spain provided the model for printers, writers, sculptors, and architects. As with the English colonies and the new nations that emerged after the Wars of Independence, Europe remained influential in arts, letters, and ideas, and the best colonial efforts usually paled beside their European mentors. Despite the restrictions of the Inquisition, examples of literature, learning, and art did come to the Indies. At the same time, however, the colonies suffered the worst defects of Spanish intellectual and creative throught while giving little of their own because of the political and religious restrictions. Poets and writers in particular suffered from the widespread influence of the work of Spanish poet Luis de Gongora (1561-1627), who managed to change Spanish literary style from terseness and simplicity to wordiness and obscurity. “Gongorism” turned grammar inside out, used a half-Latin, half-Greek vocabulary, and made veiled allusions to all kinds of obscure matters. New ideas had to be reduced to already accepted forms. Poets under the influence of Gongorism larded their work with allegory and symbolism, trying to emulate Gongora with their mental gymnastics. Spanish thought was also still under the influence of scholasticism, a medieval concept arguing that the basic truths of the universe could be found in Holy Scripture. Everything unexplained had to be explained by finding it there. The inherent merits of an issue were less important than a good memory for relevant texts. Aristotle, a pagan philosopher, became a favorite source for neoscholastics in the 16th century, as the Catholic faith argued against humanism. Neoscholasticism was a failed effort to reconcile science with religion, but as with Gongorism, form was more important than content. Schools awarded professorships to men who memorized the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. They didn’t have to understand it-just memorize it. Poets and writers in Spanish America became especially infatuated with neoscholasticism and Gongorism in the belief that creating along these lines would place them in the ranks of Miguel Cervantes and Lope de Vega (who were not influenced by Gongorism or neoscholasticism at 168 all). They staged poetic tournaments in which prizes went to memorization, form over content, and preoccupation with supernatural phenomena. Often the subject matter, meter, and length of the poem were prescribed beforehand. Poets wrote in praise of notables on their inauguration or retirement, or dealt with religious themes. The slavishness towards Gongorism may have been due to the criollos’ sense of inferiority and subservience to the succession of peninsular officials sent out to rule over them. Denied authority above the local level, criollos eventually became jealous, believing themselves just as qualified for high offices as the peninsulars felt they weren’t. In this atmosphere intellectuals had a tough time of it. An intellectual couldn’t make a living just by being one as colonial society put its creativity into social and economic developments. Intellectuals, to use a modern term, had to have a “day job.” They worked as notaries and minor government officials and tried to emulate the Renaissance ideal by writing novels, works of history, philosophy, and essays. Spreading themselves out like this, they ran the danger of superficiality as most writers could not fulfill the ideal of being a Renaissance Man. Both Latin America and North America in the colonial period looked to Europe for new trends, and colonial literature became shallow and unoriginal. Writers found their reading audience quite limited. Education was a matter of privilege for the sons of more prosperous Spaniards, criollos, and mestizos. Daughters were not generally considered educable. The mass of Indians remained illiterate. Carlos Siguenza y Gongora (d. 1700) serves as an example of the frustrations endured by an intellectual. A professor of mathematics at the University of Mexico, Siguenza was a poet, critic, astronomer (note: not an astrologer), historian, archaeologist, and philosopher. He recorded eclipses and wrote histories of the Indians of Mexico. Unfortunately, little is known of his work for the simple reason that he couldn’t afford to have his manuscripts printed, and few patrons in New Spain would sponsor him. He was aware of the separation of religion and science, yet insisted he was a devout Catholic. When the comet of 1680 flashed across the sky, Siguenza argued with Church authorities about its significance. “Comets, contrary to belief,” he said, “have nothing to do with the wrath of Providence.” 169 Sister Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695) was somewhat luckier than Siguenza in that much of her writing has survived to be read and enjoyed by a modern generation. A precocious child, she could read Latin at age five. At age fifteen she tried to enter the University of Mexico but was told that no women were allowed. Anticipating the motion picture Yentl by 300 years, she offered to wear men’s clothing to school, but the authorities still turned her down. At age sixteen, possibly following an unhappy love affair, Juana became a nun. She read, played music, wrote some plays, and composed many poems. Her interest in mathematics led to a friendship with Siguenza. The professor observed, “There is no pen that can rise to the eminence which hers overtops.” Juana broke from Gongorism, used words to express rather than conceal ideas, and acquired a considerable reputation for her writing. Her fame attracted the attention of her ecclesiastical superiors who ordered her to put away her books and devote herself to religion. Juana thought about it, sold the books, gave the proceeds to charity, and retired to the convent. Her work, however, is still published in modern magazines, and numerous studies of her life and philosophy have been published. The regular clergy believed strongly that educating Indians would make them better appreciate Spanish culture. Franciscans supported this view as early as 1523 when Fr. Pedro de Gante founded a school for Indians at Texcoco and directed it for forty years. Between 500 and 1,000 Indian boys were annually enrolled, learning Spanish and receiving training as artists and artisans. Other schools were organized for the sons of Indian leaders, and some were set up for Indian girls to prepare them for the role of homemaker. In 1547 Viceroy Mendoza founded the school of San Juan de Letran, which the Franciscans operated for abandoned mestizo children. It was supported by the sale of wild cattle and lasted for more than 300 years. Not everyone supported schools for Indians. Landholders and some churchmen opposed the idea, and Dominicans, unlike the other orders, saw schools as corruptors of the Indians. By the end of the 16th century most experiments in popular education were abandoned. Schooling then became limited to the sons of privileged families. Many Spaniards believed in deliberately withholding education from Indians and 170 blacks, and that teaching subject peoples produced subversive thoughts, agnosticism and atheism, and social commotion. As a result, Spanish America by the end of the colonial period was a largely illiterate region. Still, for those of higher status, the mother country provided opportunities for higher education. Spain founded ten major and fifteen minor institutions of higher learning during the colonial period. They were mainly modeled after the University of Salamanca in Spain, widely regarded as one of the most important centers of learning in medieval Europe. New Spain and Peru vied for the honor of being the first colony to establish a university. The University of Mexico first offered courses in 1553, but the University of San Marcos in Lima claimed its charter was the first to be signed. Meanwhile, the University of Santo Domingo claimed the “oldest” title because of a papal bull that gave university rank to the Dominican school in that city in 1538. Whether created by royal charter or founded by the Church, universities in Spanish America were all dominated by the clergy well into the 18th century. As such, they were little more than training schools for priests-but so were Harvard and Yale at that time. In the category of fine arts, the chief colonial cities boasted luxurious theatres, and the viceroys in Mexico City and Lima installed private theatres in their palaces. Theatrical troupes presented plays by Spanish masters and many forgotten American playwrights as well. The most popular early dramas were religious allegories, with lots of pageantry and color, conveying both the gospel and Spain’s greatness. The modern use of fireworks at Indian festivals can be traces to those pageants that often portrayed fights between Christians and Moors-an odd tradition, since this was in the Spanish heritage, not the Indian past. Spanish music, however, became modified by Indian and African rhythms. Spanish accomplishments in science have probably been underrated since so much work is still not available in English. Philip II was interested in science and sent careful instructions to Peru to have an eclipse of the moon observed. He was curious about what a lunar eclipse might look like when seen from the Western Hemisphere and below the Equator. In 1570 the monarch sent a doctor to Mexico to investigate the medicinal value of plants; much information was also compiled on native foods. 171 Other noteworthy accomplishments included University of Mexico scientists calculating the longitude of Mexico City more accurately than Europe had done. However, since the calculations were not published outside Mexico, Old World maps remained inaccurate for another century, including the embarrassing appearance of Alta California as an island well into the 18th century. Although no nation had the technology necessary for the task of digging a canal across the Isthmus of Panama or across Nicaragua, at least twenty plans for that project were drafted during the colonial period. A plan to drain what was left of Lake Texcoco was drafted by a Spanish engineer as early as 1608. Spanish scholarship early showed an interest in New World anthropology and natural science. Bernardino de Sahagun, one of the first Europeans seriously to examine Indian culture, wrote The General History of the Things of New Spain, published in 1569. Juan de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies appeared in 1590. Fr. Bartolome de las Casas wrote many books condemning Spain’s Indian policies, including his Brief History of the Indies in the 1570s. Alonzo de Sandoval’s denouncement of the African slave trade, On Slavery, appeared in 1627. These are but representative examples of the intellectual efforts of scholars to comprehend the complexities of the New World. Perhaps the most striking feature of intellectual and cultural life in the Americas was that it functioned at one extreme for a small number of people. To the great majority of Indians, criollos, and mestizos, education was beyond their reach, mainly for economic and often for racial reasons. For the colonies, daily life meant earning enough to have food, shelter, and clothing. They had no time for poetry debates or painting. 172 For Further Reading Bolton, Herbert E. The Rim of Christendom (1936). Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism (1998). Leonard, Irving. Baroque Times in Old Mexico (1959). Merriam, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1991). Parry, John H. The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966). Picon-Salas, Mariano. A Cultural History of Spanish America (1962). 173 CHAPTER 12: INTERNATIONAL RIVALRIES The first European nation to colonize the New World, Spain had to defend its territory against latecomers, most notably England, France, and the Netherlands. In addition, the bandeirante expeditions extended Portuguese claims for Brazil clear to the eastern foothills of the Andes. All things considered, Spain’s defense of its lands was remarkably successful. By the 18th century, after Spain had colonized and settled areas for 200 years, its rivals controlled only a few islands in the Caribbean Sea and a small, miserable part of the northeastern coast of South America. Since Spain had no claim on Brazil, its main issue with Portugal was to determine an acceptable boundary, which was done in 1750. At first Spain’s rivals preyed upon the Spanish colonies, then tried to open trade connections with them. When England and France started their own colonies, they followed mercantilist policies as Spain had been doing. The differences between the way Spain dealt with its Indian population in the colonies and French and English attitudes are worth noting. Spain tried to include the Indians in those plans, whether as a conquered people owing tribute to their masters or as an exploitable labor force. The English generally treated the Indians shabbily, as first contacts degenerated from tentative friendships and mutual aid to adversary relationships and outright hostility. France, more interested in the fur trade and extracting wealth from its colonial possessions, treated Indians as company employees. By the 1550s Carlos I had grown tired of the seemingly endless battles between Catholics and Lutherans. A coexistence of sorts was agreed upon in the Treaty of Augsburg, and a change in leadership among the nations of western Europe ushered in new policies. Philip II succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1555; Elizabeth became Queen of England in 1559; and France plunged into a nightmare of shortlived monarchs after the death of Henry II that same year. The scramble for territories in the Americas, mainly fought between Spain and France initially, threatened to bring war to those two countries. Accordingly, Spain and France drew up 174 an agreement of amity in 1559. Both nations agreed that disputes over colonial issues should not be a cause for war in Europe. The “no peace beyond the line” policy, as it became known, had a number of unintended consequences. England would go along with it as long as it suited English interests to do so. For example, England’s seizure of Spain’s Jamaica in 1655 did not bring the two nations to war. Spain had neglected the island, which was populated by a few hundred Spanish farmers at most. Under English rule Jamaica became the headquarters of English war vessels in the Caribbean, the base of all English activities in the region from where illicit commerce went to the Spanish colonies. The agreement also ushered in the age of piracy. The “line” of the policy referred to a line of latitude just north of the Caribbean Sea. Since the winds blowing from the west were vital to ships sailing to Europe, everyone in the area knew the route ships were taking. This invited interception from English, French, and Dutch pirates who saw an opportunity to seize Spanish treasure. The Spanish Main became the sea lane for conflicts that lasted until the early 18th century. For better or worse, it also inspired the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland. Using Jamaica and other English-held islands such as Barbados and Tortuga, pirates plagued Caribbean commerce for more than a century. Tortuga, a small island near Hispanola, became a center for pirates of all nations. The English governor of Jamaica and the French governor of St. Domingue (on the western part of Hispanola) looked the other way when these predators prowled the seas. Francis Drake in the 1560s had professed loyalty to England and the Protestant faith while raiding Spanish settlements. His successors in the 17th century owed nothing to any nation. Politics and religion mattered little when attacking any vulnerable ship that might be carrying a valuable cargo. Novels and motion pictures have romanticized the villainous activities of such men as Henry Morgan, William Kidd, and Edward Thatch (better known as Blackbeard), but they were gangsters pure and simple. The career of Henry Morgan indicates the tolerance England had for such miscreants. Having taken part in the seizure of Jamaica and fought against the Dutch in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-1667, Morgan knew his way around the Caribbean. In 1668 he led a fleet of buccaneers to Porto Bello, Panama, and sacked the city (“Pirates of the 175 Caribbean” may well be Disneyland’s view of this infamous raid). The following year he attacked Spanish settlements on the coast of Venezuela. His biggest success was the taking of Panama City in January 1671, in which the city was looted and burned to the ground. Morgan’s timing was off in the sacking of Panama City. Spain had constantly complained about piratical depredations, and even England was growing tired of the lawlessness of ostensibly English buccaneers. In 1670 the two nations signed the Treaty of Madrid. England agreed to act against Caribbean pirates if Spain would acknowledge English sovereignty over its islands in the West Indies. Morgan was arrested and sent to London in April 1672. His luck held, however, for relations between Spain and England deteriorated, and in 1674 Charles II knighted Morgan. Sir Henry returned to Jamaica as its new deputy governor, and he lived out his life as a prosperous planter-and sending the navy after his former pirate colleagues. Spain and France did not work out an agreement on the piracy issue until 1697 when they signed the Treaty of Ryswick. France promised to pursue and eliminate French pirates, in return for which Spain recognized French control of St. Domingue. Piracy continued, however, well into the 18th century, until government pressures forced the surviving buccaneers into somewhat less dangerous but still profitable operations-for example, smuggling and the slave trade. Rival Colonies We have seen in earlier chapters how the English, French, and Dutch successfully planted colonies in North America. Their location, however, was well north of the furthest Spanish claims to New World territory. The French claim to New France, with Quebec as headquarters, was based mainly on trade with the Indians. The fur business proved to be profitable for the French monarchs, but they gave it little actual royal support. Relatively few Frenchmen went to Canada, and even fewer Frenchwomen. French fur traders created a mixed-blood society, the metis, through marriages and liaisons with native women. The sugar islands held by France proved to be enormous moneymakers, bringing in profits far greater than the fur trade. 176 English settlement in America did not pose a direct threat to Spanish interests for 120 years. The Jamestown colony struggled for survival until its members learned to adapt to the new environment. With no gold or easy treasure, Virginia thrived when it turned to tobacco production. The Pilgrims who arrived in 1620 in southern Massachusetts were so numerically insignificant they posed no threat to local Indian tribes. However, the Puritan migration, sending more than 20,000 people to the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts, must have severely strained the resources of the region. This transplanting of a complete English society in so short a time rapidly depleted local game animals even as the men chopped down trees and cleared the land for the planting of European grains. Their view of the Indians as creatures of Satan precluded any efforts at peaceful coexistence. It seems ironic that few historians make the connection between the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621 and the outbreak of King Philip’s War a half-century later. The Pilgrims had invited the Wampanoag tribe to the feast. Its chief was Massasoit; his son, Metacom, received the name “King Philip” when he became leader of the tribe. By the 1670s relations between whites and Indians had grown so hostile that King Philip went to war against the colonists. Colonists by this time outnumbered Indians in New England 2-1. Native Americans suffered over land cessions, adverse interpretation of treaties, and even from disputes between colonies, as one colony would call on the local tribe for a declaration of loyalty against another colony. The warfare was much worse than it need have been, but the colonists had not yet learned how to fight in the wilderness. Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut formed the New England Confederacy, but the effort was known less for unity than for the cantankerous quarrels of its leaders. Poor colonial diplomacy caused some Indian tribes, such as the Narragansett, to side with the Wampanoag. The colonists failed to pursue several opportunities to end the war quickly. They almost inadvertently discovered the winning strategy when they destroyed the crops and food supplies of the Indians. King Philip’s resistance soon collapsed. More than 600 colonists and 3,000 Indians were killed and 25 towns destroyed, making it one of the bloodiest wars relative to its numbers in American frontier history. 177 During the 17th century England successfully planted twelve of its thirteen mainland colonies. Georgia, the thirteenth colony, was set up in 1732 as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida. By the 18th century Great Britain had become an aggressive, colonizing nation, whereas Spain was on the defensive. For the Spanish, Florida was a remote and lonely outpost. Needless to say, the outlines of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida did not in any way resemble the borders they have as states in the United States. It is interesting to note several postscripts to history in the form of English colonies that were attempted on Spanish territory. These colonies were of short duration, less for Spanish resistance to their preservation than for the failures inherent in their planning. Two in particular merit notice. In 1631 the Seaflower, a Puritan ship headed for the new colony in Massachusetts, somehow made a wrong left turn and ended up on an island off the coast of Nicaragua. The colonists named it Providence Island but proceeded to act in a most unpuritan manner. Rather than follow the strict dictates of Puritan theocracy, these settlers found it easier to give up farm work, buy slaves from Dutch smugglers, start sugar plantations, and go on privateering expeditions, or piracy by another name. Eventually the Spanish government tired of their antics and sent them packing. A more noteworthy failure occurred about 1690 when the Edinburgh Company attempted to establish a colony at Darien in Panama, a part of Spain’s New Granada territory. This was a large, well-financed expedition that unfortunately for the colonists took little notice of the challenges of creating a settlement in a tropical climate. Colonists were recruited from the Scottish highlands. They soon found woolen kilts unsuitable for the heat and humidity as their clothing rotted away. Liquor made the men sick and unruly. The colony’s leaders looked to the local Indians for a labor force, but the Indians had no interest either in Calvinism or in working for the Scots. Indian indifference, Spanish opposition, the hostile climate, and financial problems finally put the Darien colony out of its misery. The Darien fiasco echoed the attempt of Sir Francis Drake a century earlier when he took 2,500 men to Panama in 1595 to set up a base to attack Peru. Disease and bad luck ruined his effort, and the whole idea 178 proved fatal for Drake, for he died there. After the 1690s England found it more sensible to concentrate on its North American and Caribbean colonies than to endorse efforts to trespass in the heart of Spanish America. The Colonial Wars Honoring “no peace beyond the line,” a policy that continued until 1739 did not prevent Spain, France, and England from involving the Western Hemisphere colonies in European quarrels. From the 1690s to 1763, a series of conflicts cost the colonies dearly in lives and property. Their participation was expected as loyal subjects, but their efforts were largely ignored at the peace conferences. In the English and Spanish colonies, frustrations built up along with a growing sense that colonists could do better for themselves than to serve as cannon fodder for Europe’s wars. The cast of characters involved in the conflicts included the best and worst of Europe’s rulers. For the French, there was Louis XIV, ruler of France from 1643 to his death in 1715. During his long reign French explorers secured control of the lucrative fur trade in North America’s huge Mississippi River Valley, creating the likelihood that the English colonies huddled along the Atlantic seacoast would be blocked from expansion into the interior of North America. In contrast to French ambitions, the Spanish Habsburgs after Philip II were a succession of mediocre kings. Philip III and Philip IV left the task of government to court favorites. The last of the line, Carlos II, was remarkable mainly for living much longer than anyone expected, dying at age 35. The end product of too much royal intermarrying, Carlos II, noted historian Benjamin Keen, “was a pathetic imbecile, totally incapable of ruling.” In the 17th century the House of Stuart became the ruler of England after the death of the childless Elizabeth I in 1603. James I successfully avoided war and saw the successful establishment of the Virginia colony. His son Charles I plunged England into such continental quarrels as the disastrous Thirty Years War, argued with Parliament over appropriations, and harassed the Puritans. While colonies were being set up in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, two factions in 179 England grew increasingly hostile. The Cavaliers (supporters of the king) and the Roundheads (Puritan opponents so named for their short haircuts in contradiction to the Cavaliers’ long hair) found no common ground. In 1642 England became embroiled in a civil war that resulted in the defeat and execution of Charles I. Between 1649 and 1660, Lord Protector Cromwell ruled England as a Commonwealth. When he died in 1658 there was no one capable of continuing his office. Overtures were made to Charles I’s son, living in exile in Holland, to ascend the throne as Charles II (not to be confused with Spain’s Carlos II-royal families have little imagination when it comes to naming their children). Charles II returned to England and was crowned king in the Restoration of the monarchy. However, his marriage to Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza quickly brought a war between England and Portugal’s hated enemy, the Netherlands. Although England did seize New Amsterdam in North America and change it to the English colony of New York, the Anglo-Dutch War, fought largely on the high seas, did not go well for England. Historians who claim that England secured control of the sea after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 overlook the ongoing rivalry between England and the Netherlands. Britannia did not rule the waves until the Dutch conceded defeat after a series of wars. Charles II was a popular monarch. His loveless marriage did not prevent him from enjoying a series of mistresses and the production of a number of illegitimate children. However, Catherine did not give him an heir to the throne. There was another matter that troubled Englishmen. Ostensibly the head of the Church of England, Charles privately accepted the teachings of Catholicism. When he died in 1685, he made a deathbed conversion to the Catholic faith. Since he had no legitimate heirs, his brother James became James II. Unlike Charles, who had been tolerant in religion and private in his beliefs, James was a practicing Catholic in a nation that had been Protestant for 150 years. Concerns were raised that he might try to turn the clock back. James in fact expressed tolerance toward Protestant dissenters, but his political actions alarmed Whig leaders who opposed absolutist rule. There was another factor that influenced the opposition to James II. His daughters Mary and Anne, raised as Protestants, would succeed him as England’s monarch. In 1673, however, the 40-year-old James, widowered 180 for the past two years, married Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian princess. In 1688 she gave birth to a son who automatically pushed James’s daughters out of the immediate succession. One day there would be a James III and a Catholic dynasty ruling England. Anti-Catholic sentiment ran high in England, and before the year ended, the Glorious Revolution took place. James II and his family fled to France and a refuge with Louis XIV. James’s daughter Mary had married the Dutch prince William of Orange, her first cousin (making James II William’s father-in-law and uncle at the same time, a typical example of royal inbreeding). William and Mary were now invited to become joint rulers of England in a constitutional monarchy. James wanted his throne back, and without much persuasion Louix XIV agreed to support him. James’s plight fit right into Louis XIV’s agenda for expansion in Europe and the Americas. His army was the strongest one in Europe, and his navy was larger than the combined English and Dutch fleets. Aiding James regain his throne would give Louis XIV the opportunity to keep the English colonies in North America constricted in size. In Europe, he intended to gain territory in the Rhineland at the expense of Austra, whose Emperor Leopold I had his own problems repelling a Turkish invasion. Louis’s plans of aggression alarmed other European nations for France would dominate Europe. Louis XIV underestimated William III, whom the French king thought would be too occupied securing his throne to interfere with France’s annexation plans. But William’s army routed the Jacobites (supporters of James) and their French allies at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. William then joined with Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and several other kingdoms in a Grand Alliance against France. The conflict ran from 1689 to 1697 and has various names, depending on which countries were at war and where it was fought: the Nine Years’ War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and King William’s War. The English colonies called the affair King William’s War, and they were directly affected by it. William III could spare few troops for America; the colonists were on their own. French soldiers and their Indian allies headed south from Quebec and attacked isolated settlements and farms in New York and Massachusetts. General William Phips organized 181 an enthusiastic but illtrained expedition that captured the strategically located Port Royal on the Newfoundland peninsula but failed to take Quebec. When the war ended, the colonists were disillusioned to learn that the Treaty of Ryswick returned Port Royal to French control. The war ended in 1697 with the main victory being the failure of Louis XIV to accomplish his plans. However, the nations in the Grand Alliance had their own goals, and the general peace that came left no one satisfied. The Austrian Habsburgs still opposed the French Bourbons, and the Protestant English distrusted the French. James II died in 1701, never regaining his throne; the task was passed to his son, still a teenager. The end of the war brought only a temporary respite to hostilities. Every European monarch sensed that the conflict would be renewed when Carlos II of Spain finally expired. Epileptic, feebleminded, and subject to fits of insanity, Carlos was the last of the Spanish Habsburgs. In 1698 England, France, and the Dutch Republic signed a treaty agreeing that Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria would inherit the Spanish throne. Unfortunately, the prince died a few months later. The nations tried again, this time offering the crown to a son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, with the condition that certain Spanish territories would go to France. This was unacceptable to Leopold and to Spanish nobles. Poor Carlos II was persuaded to sign a will putting Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson, on the Spanish throne. When Carlos finally died on November 1, 1700, Louis XIV proclaimed his grandson as the new Spanish king, and made the point by sending an army into the Spanish Netherlands. England, the Dutch Republic, Austria, Portugal, Prussia, Hanover, and some other German states declared war on France. Louis XIV found allies with Bavaria and Savoy. Once again Europe plunged into a major war. William III died in 1702 (his wife Mary had died in 1694), and England had a new monarch, Mary’s sister Anne. This conflict, the War of the Spanish Succession, dragged on for a dozen years. English colonists called it Queen Anne’s War. Once again the French came down from Canada to attack New England, but fighting also took place from the back country of the Carolinas west to Louisiana. A French fleet attacked Rio de Janeiro and threatened to destroy the town unless the Portuguese paid a ransom, which was done. And again, the English colonists captured Port Royal, this time keeping it. 182 The War of the Spanish Succession exhausted its combatants. Louis XIV tried to end the war in 1708 and even showed a willingness for an Austrian Habsburg to become king of Spain. But England (Great Britain after the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707) pushed too much, insisting that Louis XIV had to use his army to take his grandson, Philip V, out of Spain. The alliance against Louis collapsed in 1711, and serious peace negotiations at last began with France, each nation seeking its own best deal. The most important of the treaties that were signed, the Peace of Utrecht, was signed in April 1714, settling matters between France and England. Louis XIV recognized Anne as Queen of England and pledged no further support for James III, known in history as the “Old Pretender.” France gave up Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, claims for Hudson’s Bay, and the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean. Great Britain also took control of the Rock of Gibraltar. Philip V remained as king of a Spain that no longer held other Habsburg lands. Immediately following the war the cast of characters dramatically changed in Europe. Queen Anne died on August 1, 1714, surviving all of her dozen children (most of whom had died in infancy), ending the House of Stuart. A search of the royal genealogical charts for a suitable Protestant successor produced George of Hanover, a great-grandson of James I. George was already 55 years old and not about to take an ESL class to learn English. The English people swallowed this Germanspeaking king as best they could. James III saw an opportunity to invade England and recapture the throne for the Stuarts, but the attempt failed. Like his father, James had to pass his claim to the next generation. Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, leaving a five-year-old great-grandson as his heir. Three decades of relative peace followed, during which time England started its Georgia colony (for George II, who became king when his father died in 1727), France strengthened its Mississippi Valley outposts, and both nations staked out islands overlooked by Spain in the Caribbean as sugar colonies. Spain had always been at the purchasing end of the slave trade, and since the early 16th century the Crown had made asientos de negros (“Negroes’ contracts”) granting monopolies to contractors who would supply slaves for the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The contractor paid a fee to the Crown and imported a specific number of slaves to the 183 colonies. Individual Spaniards received contracts, as did other nations, including Portugal, Great Britain, France, and Holland. One of the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht granted Great Britain’s South Sea Company an asiento that allowed the importation of 4,800 slaves a year for thirty years along with one ship, called a “permission-ship” to engage in general trade. The British interpreted the agreement in an interesting way. They anchored the permission-ship permanently at Porto Bello, Panama, and used it to offload tons of goods and slaves from Jamaica. There were claims of huge profits from this business, up to 100% from the smuggled goods alone, but some sources suggested the operation was more trouble than it was worth. The South Sea Company had to pay the Spanish Crown 34,000 pounds a year for the first 4,000 slaves whether they were imported or not. Of course, the Caribbean continued as a hotbed of smuggling and illicit commercial activity. In 1738 Captain Robert Jenkins addressed a committee of the House of Commons and displayed a jar in which there lay a human ear. Jenkins said it was his, lopped off in April 1731 by a Spanish captain during a quarrel over who had the right to be where in the West Indies. In keeping with the policy of “no peace beyond the line,” Parliament at first rejected the idea of war with Spain. After all, the two nations were engaged in profitable trade. Public outrage about Jenkins’s ear, however, and other incidents between Spanish and British ships in the Caribbean, pushed Great Britain into a reluctant war in October 1739. For the first time in 180 years, a Western Hemisphere event started war in Europe. Other events soon eclipsed the War of Jenkins’ Ear. In December 1740 Frederick II of Prussia sent an army into Silesia, a province of Austria, shortly after the death of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick saw an opportunity in the fact that the new ruler of Austria, Maria Theresa, was young and female. The nations of Europe took sides on the issue, France and Bavaria joining with Spain in the scramble for Austrian territory. Great Britain supported Austria, renewing the FrenchBritish rivalry in what became known in Europe as the War of the Austrian Succession and, in the English colonies, King George’s War. In the course of the war James III’s son Charles, popularly known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” led a French-supported invasion of Great 184 Britain and almost succeeded in recovering the throne for the Stuarts. Ultimately he failed, ending at last any serious Stuart effort to gain the British Crown. The war continued literally until its participants ran out of money and settled matters at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappele in 1748. For France and England, nothing was settled. Unlike the previous wars, the final showdown between France and England began in the Western Hemisphere. In 1754 Lord Dunsmore, governor of Virginia, learned that a French party was allegedly trespassing on English soil along the upper Ohio River, near the site of present-day Pittsburgh. He sent a young and inexperienced George Washington to deal with the intruders, and Washington’s force of militia and Indian allies captured them. Unable to prevent the murder of one of the prisoners, Washington compounded the problem by admitting in writing the English were at fault. The murdered Frenchman turned out to have diplomatic credentials; this gave France the excuse to settle matters with Britain once and for all. Known in the colonies as the French and Indian War and in Europe as the Seven Years’ War, this conflict was truly a major world war. In India the British soundly defeated the French and secured undisputed control there. France and Great Britain rounded up the usual ambitious allies and fought in Europe. The British sent a sizable army to North America to support the colonials against the French and their Indian allies. In 1760 Louis XV invited his cousin, Carlos III, who the previous year had become king of Spain, to become an ally of France. Carlos accepted the offer but soon had cause to regret it. At first handicapped by incompetent officers and troops illprepared to fight in the forests of North America, the British succeeded in turning events around, most significantly in capturing Quebec in 1759. From then on France went on the defensive. Superior British financial and economic resources wore down France, and with a string of British victories in North America and the Caribbean, the French were ready to make peace. The Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763, had significant and long-term effects on the Americas. France ceded Canada (New France-western Canada remained largely unexplored) to Great Britain, along with any claims to lands east of the Mississippi River. Great Britain 185 had triumphed over Spanish and French island colonies in the West Indies. To regain control of Cuba, Spain yielded Florida to Britain (twenty years later Spain regained Florida for having helped the United States win its independence). France then compensated Spain for the loss of Florida by turning over the Louisiana territory--a dubious gift since its enormous size went far beyond Spain’s colonial bureaucracy to administer; Spain could also look across the Mississippi River and almost literally see the aggressive British colonists. The British public cared little for Canada but expressed unhappiness over the decision of British diplomats to return Guadalupe, Martinique, Marie-Galante, and Desirade to French control, and Cuba to Spain. These were important sugar-producing islands that brought far more profit than the Canadian fur trade. For its part the French ceded the islands of Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago to Britain. The British also returned control of Manila in the Philippines to Spain. In Europe, the French pulled out of the lands of Britain’s allies Hanover, Hesse, and Brunswick. For the Americas the Treaty of Paris meant much more than changes in real estate. The heart of North America would be dominated by English culture and language, not French; the much larger population of English farmers won out over French accomplishments in exploration and formation of Indian alliances. British takeover of West Indies sugar islands likewise altered their cultural development. Islands in close proximity would differ in language, social relations, and politics. In British North America, the ink on the Treaty of Paris was hardly dry before colonists began to complain about Parliament’s efforts to pay for the cost of running the new and improved British Empire by taxing its colonies. There is an interesting footnote to the exchanges of real estate in the Americas. Stimulated by Russian fur trading expeditions in the North Pacific and Alaska, and by rapidly increasing knowledge and technology in sea and land exploration, Spain determined to make good its claim to the Pacific coast of North America. In 1769 it sent the Sacred Expedition north from Baja California, effectively beginning the settlement of Alta California. But how far north did the Spanish claim go? In 1789 Spanish warships seized four British trading vessels anchored at Nootka Sound, an 186 inlet of Vancouver Island. The British government took up the cause of the aggrieved merchants. Spain argued that its right to the entire northwestern coast of North America dated to the papal grant of 1493. British diplomats responded that sovereignty could be claimed only if the land was actually occupied, and Spain had not done so. Spain had the claim, but Great Britain had the military power, backed up by diplomatic support from Prussia. The Nootka Sound Convention, signed on October 28, 1790, effectively limited Spanish sovereignty to the 42nd parallel-the northern border of the modern state of California. 187 For Further Reading Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (2000). Carse, Robert. The Age of Piracy (1965). Maltby, William C. The Black Legend in England (1971). Means, Philip A. The Spanish Main: Focus of Envy (1935). Parry, J.H., and Sherlock, P.H. A Short History of the West Indies (1956). Peckham, Howard H. The Colonial Wars (1964). 188 CHAPTER 13: THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAS Anyone contemplating a trip through time may expect to have a reasonable conversation with someone as far back as around the year 1700. Beyond that, with few exceptions the time traveler could well be accused of sorcery, witchcraft, heresy, or insanity merely by describing what the average person today takes for granted in matters of technology, science, religion, and psychology. It surprises people to realize how recently many of our common assumptions have come about: the germ theory of disease, government of the people, a heliocentric solar system, rapid communication, tolerance of other faiths and cultures (humanity is still working on that last one). Worldwide agreement on the clock starting with Grenwich mean time and moving at one-hour intervals across 24 time zones was first agreed upon only in the 1880s. Modern historians have assigned arbitrary titles to eras in history, usually at the distance and advantage of hindsight. Ancient history, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantic Era, and “Modern Times” are familiar examples. Common sense tells us that no one walked through the agora at Athens commenting on life in “ancient” Greece, since the times they lived in were “modern” times. Recorded history spans a period of about 6,000 years, of which two-thirds is considered “B.C.”-Before Christ, a splitting of history not made until the 17th century. Obviously, people (and history) do not move overnight from one era to another. Some eras begin dramatically, as when Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation when he nailed 95 accusations against the Catholic Church to the Wittenburg church door in 1517. Others are more gradual. Well into the Renaissance era, many people still thought in medieval terms, conflating religion with science and topography. Unlike other eras, writers of the Enlightenment period used the term. They were convinced Europe was emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance to a new age enlightened by reason, science, and respect for humanity. For them, the Age of the Enlightenment was a time when ideas about God, reason, nature, and humanity combined to form the intellectual power that 189 explained the universe and improved the condition of mankind. Enlightenment thinkers worked for knowledge, freedom, and happiness. Reason as an intellectual force began long before the 17th century. Greek philosophers saw order in nature; Romans believed in natural law. In the Middle Ages, reason placed second to spiritual revelation as scholasticism became the dominant method of intellectual inquiry. By the 17th century, putting issues of natural law within the confines of a religious framework was proving an inadequate method for dealing with poltiical, scientific, social, and economic questions. When farmers complained to Pope Gregory VII that the Julian Calendar’s inaccuracies hurt their plans for planting and harvesting, the Pope sponsored a revision of the calendar. Since the revision necessitated dropping eleven days to make the solar year calculations accurate for the new calendar, Protestants treated the idea as a popish plot. Great Britain somewhat irrationally held out on adopting the Gregorian Calendar until 1752; Russia remained on the Julian Calendar until the Soviet revolution in 1917. Glimmers of light amid emotion, irrationality, and ignorance can be detected in the 17th century. John Locke explored the idea that the human mind at birth was a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which the experiences of life would be written. No one was born either good or bad, and no one at birth was marked with original sin. Another English thinker, Thomas Hobbes, saw man as an amoral creation interested mainly in his own survival. Other writers questioned the arbitrariness of an authoritarian state, formulating theories of societies founded upon natural rights. An understanding of science moved from the Catholic Churh’s condemnation of Galileo’s theories about the universe to the grudging acceptance of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravity by the end of the 17th century. By the 18th century, Enlightenment thinking could be found in a number of European countries, its contributors including Locke in political theory, David Hume in economics, and Newton in science from England; Immanuel Kant in philosophy from Germany; and Miguel de Cervantes in literature from Spain. The “Father of Modern Philosophy,” the 17th-century French thinker Rene Descartes summarized intellect in the famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” a belief that suffices for philosophy for many people today. 190 In the 18th century the center of Enlightenment thinking was in France. In 1748 Charles Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of the Laws, a monumental study of political institutions that directly influenced the framers of the United States Constitution. Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract in 1762, arguing that “humans were good and society was bad.” Jean Francois Voltaire wrote Candide, a brilliant satire on society and philosophy. But the most innovative contribution of the period came from Denis Diderot. In 1747 Diderot conceived of a project in which the state of science, technology, and thought would be presented in a series of volumes he called the Encyclopedie. He originally intended the books as a compendium of information, but it soon became much more than that. He enlisted a body of contributors, among them Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, and he also wrote many articles himself on philosophy, social theory, and French industries, among other topics. Between 1751 and 1752 Diderot published 28 volumes, 17 text and eleven of plate illustrations. Diderot also made the information accessible to anyone through the simple system of organizing the articles alphabetically regardless of topic. Overall, the Encyclopedie looked pretty much the way present-day encyclopedias do. Diderot set a format that would endure for 250 years-right down to the World Wide Web and electronic information retrieval. The French government and Catholic Church authorities examined the volumes and were alarmed at the ease with which possibly subversive information could be disseminated. The old adage, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” applied less to the person acquiring that knowledge than the threat the acquisition of knowledge presented to those in power. Conservatives and reactionaries were appalled and demanded that the work be censured. Some volumes were suppressed but were published anyway, though at times the situation became politically hot for Diderot. Voltaire offered to have the rest of the set published outside France, but Diderot doggedly kept the work a French operation even though he had to publish some volumes surreptitiously. Ultimately the Encyclopedie became a statement for human rationality and a warning against any political or religious authority that sought to control individual intellect. Louis XV tried unsuccessfully to 191 ban it for its criticism of his government; the Catholic Church denounced its skepticism of organized religion. The encyclopedia idea, however, caught on and soon spread to other nations. In Great Britain, for example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s first edition appeared in three volumes between 1768 and 1771; by the third edition, the compendium counted eighteen volumes, published between 1788 and 1797 (and Britannica.com continues the publication into the 21st century). Not all monarchs were as stiffheaded as Louis XV. Joseph II of Austria, Catherine the Great of Russia, Federick II of Prussia, and Carlos III of Spain in one way or another fit into the category of “enlightened despots,” an oxymoronic description of absolute rulers who encouraged arts, sciences, economics, and other fields. They often drew a line between royal and religious authority. Enlightenment thought thus exercised great influence on the science, philosophy, and political thinking of the late 17th and 18th centuries. It was a time when printers considered it an acceptable risk to publish controversial material, and improvements in printing presses brought out not only books, but also magazines and newspapers. Improved communications between nations made it possible for publications to cross national boundaries and to be translated into other languages. Controversial works even slipped past the radar of the Inquisition, down considerably in its influence from previous centuries. Enlightenment thinkers argued that knowledge was not innate but came instead from experience and observation, guided by reason. Education could alter humanity for the better. In contrast to the medieval scholasticism that derived truth from authoritative sources such as the Bible and Aristotle, the lumieres, as French Enlightenment writers styled themselves, believed that if one observed nature, the truth would be revealed without recourse to authority. As for religion, Enlightenment thinkers did not reject it, but instead they opted for Deism-a belief in God without the intricacies of theology. Forget the next life, they said; improve this one. Since the Catholic Church suppressed the free exercise of reason, the lumieres opposed the Church. In the late 18th century the Enlightenment movement made a fateful shift from reason to emotion. Rousseau argued that sentiment and emotion, not just reason, influenced thought. His readers avoided his 192 complex political theories and simplified his arguments. Down with the superficial and artificial, up with simplicity and directness. If human equality was the goal, then down with aristocracy. Many Enlightenment writers, Montesquieu among them, belonged to the French aristocracy, putting them in the difficult position of resisting the increasing impetus for change. In the end the French Revolution’s excesses pulled down the Enlightenment, but its legacy endured. A watershed in thinking created the “modern” view of things we accept as ordinary today, including the belief that progress is a necessity for humanity. The Effect of the Enlightenment in Spain Spain’s Habsburg rulers had frittered away an empire through involvement in foreign wars and in mismanagement at home. The 18thcentury Bourbon heirs-Philip V and his sons Ferdinand VI and Carlos IIIsought to improve conditions both at home and for Spain’s colonial empire. Under them, Spain recovered much of its lost luster. An increasing population enjoyed prosperous times, reform efforts attempted to modernize the colonial bureaucracy, and the government’s voice was again heard in international politics. One of the important developments in this period was the rise of Jansenism, a movement favoring austerity in the Catholic Church and opposition to the theological teachings of the Jesuits. Jansenists endorsed a strong royal policy and opposed Jesuit ultramontanism, the support of the Papacy over national monarchs. When Carlos III, a strong Jansenist, expelled the Jesuits from all Spanish territories in 1767, changes occurred in education, and the Inquisition lost influence. Carlos III attempted to reform the Church in Spain and by his successes was able to assert the power of the Crown. Somewhat contradictorily, Carlos III achieved a high level of royal absolutism, but his enlightened views opened Spain to new ideas. He appointed Jansenists to high posts, and after the 1750s the Church lost independence and authority. The Enlightenment was to enter Spain largely through the figure of Benito Geronimo Feyjoo y Montenegro, a monk who encouraged studies in science and pursued knowledge from new sources while somehow keeping his Catholic faith. Although he died in 1759--the same year 193 Carlos III became king-his work exercised a tremendous influence on Spanish intellectual thought. He wrote many critical works condemning Spain’s obscurantism and conservatism, arguing against Aristotle and scholasticism and for rationalism and Cartesian philosophy. From the 1750s on, the Spanish government took a strong interest in scientific developments, established communication with scientists in other countries, and attempted to improve the nation’s economic life. Here Spain lagged behind other countries that were beginning to discard mercantilism and accept laissez-faire trade in which the marketplace, not the government, made the rules. Spanish scholars were getting familiar with the work of Adam Smith in England, most notably his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, and political economy was shown to be a study worth pursuing. With the decline in Inquisition influence, Voltaire, Condillac, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and other lumieres were read in French or in Spanish translations. What the Inquisition could not stand, royal government tolerated. During the 30-year reign of Carlos III “forbidden” books found their way into Spain, controversial plays were performed, and a Spanish version of the lumiere, the luce, wrote about scientific progress, educational reform, economic prosperity, and social justice. Carlos III lent his influence to the growth of the periodical press, though the royal government watched over what was published, and the Inquisition could still make threats. Inevitably, some intellectuals found Enlightenment ideas unacceptable and wrote critiques against Rousseau and Voltaire. Spain’s acceptance of the Enlightenment was modest at best. Revolutionaries and heretics found no audience in Spain, and the philosophical and political aspects of the Enlightenment were not of major concern. Instead, Spanish reformers were attracted to the possibliities of scientific and technological improvement, especially in their country’s economy. With Carlos III’s blessing, more than sixty chapters of the Amigos del Pais, the Economic Friends of the Nation, were established throughout Spain between 1775 and 1800 to improve Spain’s economic condition. The chief promoter of the Amigos del Pais, Gaspar de Jovellanos, addressed the serious shortcomings of Spain’s economy in Agrarian Law, a book on the nation’s agricultural problems. Spain had a combination of 194 huge ecclesiastical estates and a poor peasantry. The nation badly needed land reform. Jovellanos condemned property restrictions such as entail and mortmain as relics of the Middle Ages. His book made for dull reading, but it was full of implications for revolutionizing farming and the social arrangements that hobbled progress in agriculture. Since the book attacked the Church, the Inquisition condemned it. Even the Crown thought Jovellanos went too far in some of his criticisms, especially in areas concerning property rights. But the book did provide a wake-up call to address long neglected problems. In 1789 the French Revolution began as a protest against an idle aristocracy that had neglected the peasantry for too long. “Liberty, euqality, fraternity” celebrated a fulfillment of some Enlightened ideas, but reason became lost as the Revolution degenerated into violence and excess. Enlightened conservatives became alarmed, then shocked when heads started rolling, among them the tetes of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. There had been no “radical” followers of the Enlightenment in Spain. Those who supported new ideas had always been outnumbered by opponents and mass apathy. The luces in Spain didn‘t match up to the French lumieres, and what was going on in France scared many people. Carlos III died the year before the outbreak of Revolution in France. His son, Carlos IV, was already in middle age, and he lacked his father’s ambition, intellect, and activity. He seemed incapable of dealing with the currents that swirled about him. The Spanish government tried to censor news and keep Spain pure from French agitators, but radicals nevertheless mailed propaganda to Spain in plain wrappers, and information about what was happening on the other side of the Pyranees Mountains filtered through. To add to Spanish alarm, French refugees crossed the mountains into Spain and told of the atrocities going on and the upheavals in France. After the beheading of Louis XVI, Spain became actively hostile against France, joining other nations in a complex series of wars that aroused some political opposition at home. In those turbulent times Carlos IV tried his best to deal with events beyond his comprehension. He dismissed his popular chief minister, the Count of Aranda, and replaced him with Manuel de Godoy, who also happened to be the lover of Queen Maria Luisa (an affair apparently 195 known to everyone in Spain except Carlos IV). Godoy managed to end Spain’s war with France in 1795. His romantic relationship aside, Godoy was an important supporter of the Enlightenment, encouraging studies in history, science, education, and economics. A brisk trade had developed in Spain in “prohibited” books. Unfortunately, the body of progressives who had originally brought the Enlightenment to Spain did not give much support to the government. Price rose while money values fell, and economic reform gave way to a new war, this time with Great Britain, in 1796. Godoy withdrew from the ministry in 1798, and was replaced by Jovellanos who renewed the old struggle against the ultramontanists. This time, however, the ultramontanists succeeded in discrediting Jovellanos and his successors. A new government tried to restore the old order with the pliable Carlos IV. Spain, France, and Great Britain did manage to end their military squabbles by 1802, but by then there was a new player on the scene who would start the new century with political disruptions on a scale that surprised even the most radical French revolutionaries: the player was Napoleon Bonaparte. Carlos IV would play his own minor scene before exiting from the world stage in 1808. He allowed himself to be conned by Napoleon into trading the Louisiana territory for some Bourbon holdings in Italy in the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1801. Carlos IV had intended to provide the landholdings for greedy relatives, but the plan never happened. Napoleon changed his mind about invading Saint Domingue and wound up selling the Louisiana territory to the United States. Latin America and the Enlightenment By the mid-18th century young men from the Latin American and English colonies had no great difficulty crossing the Atlantic. These men, often in the role of students, visited Spain, England, France, and other European countries. They brought back ideas with them, especially in the areas of science, economics, medicine, and law. The popular press, especially during the reign of Carlos III, easily evaded Inquisition censorship, though it was still an annoyance. Spanish American criollos 196 enjoyed the critical attitude of Enlightenment writings and the new ideas those writings presented. In addition to the Amigos del Pais chapters established in Spain, fourteen chapters were founded in Spanish America between 1783 and 1819. These and other formally and informally organized associations held public discussions, prize contests, and meetings, and they put out publications of their own. Unlike the baroque era, these gatherings offered no Gongorism but instead offered forums for dealing with political and economic issues of vital concern to colonists growing discontented with a stagnant colonial bureaucracy. Even freemasonry, an organization anathema to the Catholic Church that opposed secret societies-especially liberal ones-found a foothold in Spanish America. Censorship was not relaxed so much as it was poorly enforced. The writings of Descartes, Montaigne, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others found their way into the colonies and into private libraries. Even churchmen and provincial officials, considering themselves “modern” men, ignored the Inquisition Index and had their own large collections of books that included “forbidden” writings. Young criollos looked at the newest descriptions of science, medicine, philosophy, and law, leading them to speculate and question. They discussed topics ranging from problems of free trade versus mercantilism and commercial concerns to the progress of man and natural rights. It should of course be noted that those who were exposed this way constituted a minority of an elite that itself was a minority ruling over a mass of largely uneducated people, including conquered and subjugated Indians who lived a world apart from the heady mix of Enlightenment ideas. Some criollos were attracted to Enlightenment teachings as a fad, because others were doing it; and some found un-Catholic ideas disturbing. Some interesting contacts were made between the Latin American and English colonies. The thirteen British colonies had established connections with Latin America as far back as the 1690s. A lively correspondence went on between the two regions as scientists, historians, physicians, and novelists exchanged letters, articles, and books. The 18thcentury saw the beginnings of modern newspapers, though they were seldom more than four-page sheets, published weekly. Someone living in a town with a population of 500 in the English colonies could make a 197 comfortable living publishing such a newspaper, even surviving on as few as 200 subscribers if they paid their bills. Such newspapers were often starved for news items and reprinted stories form other newspapers. They also translated articles from other languages; thus Latin American and English readers found audiences for each other’s work. Arguably the most prominent connection on three continents was Benjamin Franklin, the closest the colonial era (or since) has come to replicating the ideal of the Renaissance Man. Of humble origins, Franklin rose to international fame as a publisher, inventor, and author. He invented bifocal glasses, the Franklin wood-burning stove, and the lightning rod. Among his publications were the Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper, the Saturday Evening Post magazine, and Poor Richard’s Almanac. He also wrote his autobiography. Franlin helped found the American Philosophical Society that is still active after more than two and a half centuries. The Society welcomed the scientific writings of Latin Americans, and leading Spanish Americans joined the Society as well as other associations that encouraged the advancement of technical and economic knowledge. In turn Franklin belonged to many associations in the Spanish colonies. When the United States successfully fought its war for independence, its most famous document was translated into many languages. The Declaration of Independence fascinated criollo intellectuals. Here was a blueprint that justified breaking away from a mother country. Thomas Jefferson enumerated just about every grievance a colonial could think of to blame on his ruler (Jefferson’s indictment of the slave trade, however, was omitted by the Second Continental Congress; too many delegates owned slaves or were involved in the slave trade). Spanish colonial officials perceived the dangers of such a document and tried unsuccessfully to suppress it. Thomas Paine provided additional documentation that alarmed European rulers but reached criollos, including translated versions of his widely circulated revolutionary pamphlets, Common Sense and The Crisis. As a colonial he was possibly second only to Franklin in acquiring an international reputation, though his radical ideas were seen as far more dangerous than Franklin’s homespun philosophy. Later on Paine wrote The Age of Reason, a treatise on religion and free-thinking that added 198 organized religion to his list of enemies. When the French Revolution broke out and the old order toppled, Paine wrote a defense of it, The Rights of Man. He was honored with a membership in the National Convention. There he sat, not understanding a word of what was going on since he spoke no French, his ideas moving far beyond his personage. All of this social, political, and philosophical ferment found a mixed reception among Spanish colonial officials. Some viceroys ignored the pleas of the Inquisition to stop the importation of Enlightenment authors. Instead, the officials encouraged their teaching and reading, and kept their own private libraries. Other officials tried to curtail Enlightment writings as politically subversive. Perhaps a generation behind their European cousins, criollos included a majority of apathetic men not especially interested in new ideas, and extremes of enthusiastic Enlightenment supporters and opponents. When revolution at last came to Latin America, following on two major revolutions and the threat of Napoleonic France, colonial leaders could find Enlightenment roots in their struggle’s political, philosophical, and scientific aspect. However, given the limited objectives of the Spanish American revolts in their early stages, these factors may be overemphasized. To the masses of Indians and peons, the Spanish American Wars of Independence represented nothing more than a change of leaders. In Brazil the Enlightenment had even less impact than in the Spanish American colonies. Portugal was not particularly involved with the Enlightenment, so any interest in Brazil was handicapped by this apathy. The colony’s culture was ingrown and backward. However, after the Academia real das Sciencias (Portuguese Royal Academy of Science) was established, Brazilians gained some of the lost ground. Brazil was not a leader, nor was it much of a follower, for Latin America in the Enlightenment. As the 18th century drew to a close, some colonial intellectuals sent word through their writings to Spain that despite their apparent imitation of things cultural from Europe, they were growing increasingly aware of their economic backwardness and of the social and political neglect Spain had accorded them. Taking a cue from their North American neighbors who had successfully broken away from colonial rule, these criollos evidenced a growing sense of nationality. There was a sense 199 of being Mexican, or, at the very least, South American-and at most, Venezuelan, Chilean, Paraguayan-new political entities with whom Spain would have to deal. Spain needed to face the fact that despite the slightness of the Enlightenment’s effect on Spanish America, there was an effect. Forbidden books smuggled into the colonies while viceroys and other officials either looked the other way or else acquired their own copies showed a desire for change. Journals and newspapers sprang up like weeds, died after awhile, and were reborn again; and some criollos called for exchanges of scientific and economic ideas. If the mother country would not grant such exchanges, then the criollos might move to take them anyway. 200 For Further Reading Commager, Henry S. The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (1977). Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie, 1775-1800 (1979). Furbank, P.N. Diderot: A Critical Biography (1992). Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment, an Interpretation (1966). Herr, Richard. The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (1958). Morner, Magnus. The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (1965). Shuffleton, Frank, ed. The American Enlightenment (1993). Whitaker, Arthur P., ed. Latin America and the Enlightenment (1961). 201 CHAPTER 14: THE ERA OF INDEPENDENCE The period roughly 1776-1826, a convenient and nicely rounded fifty years, encompasses the time when most of the nations in the Western Hemisphere gained their independence. The American Revolution, with roots dating to the 1760s, served as a model for Latin American independence, though there may well be as many contrasts as comparisons. Whatever the differences, the War for Independence fought by the thirteen colonies touched off an age of revolution. Six years after the end of the American Revolution, the French Revolution began, running from 1789 to 1799. The rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his political ambitions, then led directly to the wars of independence in the Latin American colonies. Both the United States and the Spanish American nations were born from similar roots of discontent. Great Britain and Spain ignored the complaints of colonials who had become dissatisfied with remote governments. Colonials on both American continents bypassed the restrictive policies of mercantilism by becoming heavily involved in smuggling. They felt themselves a people different from their European cousins. Just as the English colonists protested aganst Parliament’s arbitrary legislation, so did criollos express dissatisfaction at the tired rule of the Council of the Indies and ineffectual Bourbon reforms. Naturally, there were important differences between the colonies on two continents. They included differences in size, population, view of democracy, and the place of Indians, Africans, and mixed-blood peoples in their society. Stretched along the Atlantic seacoast, the thirteen English colonies covered a much smaller geographic area than the Spanish territory that extended from the Borderlands to the southern frontiers of South America. It should be noted that the modern boundaries of the states in the United States are not the same as when the original thirteen states were colonies. Some had charters that extended their territorial claims all the way across the North American continent, ignoring Spanish claims to California and other western territories. The charters ignored and were ignorant of river courses, mountains, deserts, and climate beyond the Mississippi River. Another distinction lay in the people of the colonies. 202 The English colonies were fairly homogeneous, if one excluded Indians and slaves. Spanish America’s colonies varied from colonies with large indigenous populations, such as Peru and Mexico, to colonies where the Indians had been decimated and replaced by African slaves, such as Cuba and Santo Domingo. From start to finish, the wars of independence against Great Britain and Spain lasted approximately the same amount of time if the origins of the revolutions are taken into account. For the United States, the time span ran from 1763, when Great Britain began to consider how to pay for the expense of running an empire and began to impose unacceptable taxation. For Spanish America, the years vary, but many historians accept 1808 as a starting point when Napoleon’s armies invaded Spain, to 1826, when the last battles had been fought. Within these time frames campaigns began and ended in both areas. The chief difference was that the United States, as one nation, concluded the peace treaty with Great Britain in 1783. Individual Spanish colonies began their revolutions and won their independence at various times. The thirteen colonies largely excluded Indians as allies, though the British used them. The British also hired Hessians, foreign mercenaries who fought for money rather than for ideological reasons. For their part, the colonials obtained major help from France, and indirectly from Spain and Holland as cobelligerents against Great Britain. The colonials resisted enlisting free blacks or slaves in their cause, whereas the British promised freedom to slaves that came to their side. When the British lost the war, they broke their promises, and many slaves who had been freed were returned to their masters or resold to plantations in Jamaica or the Bahamas. By contrast, the Spanish American Revolutions consisted of a hodgepodge of race, class, and political allegiances. Indians, mestizos, mulattoes, blacks, and whites fought on both sides. Although English colonials spoke of liberty and their rights as Englishmen, few creoles were democratic. Spanish society with its varying levels of class, caste, and race was far more complex than English colonial society. As to race, English plantation owners in the southern colonies were already formulating the “drop of blood” definition of who was black, a view that 203 differed greatly from how persons of color would be seen in Latin America after independence. Brazil stood in contrast to the protracted warfare and bloodshed of the English and Spanish colonies. Its revolution was peaceful, and though its causes were similar to the Spanish and English colonies, its result was entirely different, as will be seen later in this chapter. Both the English and Spanish colonies experienced severe difficulties following their achievement of independence. The United States emerged as a nation composed of the former colonies in a federal system that placed a national government at its head. But it took two constitutions, years of dispute over the relationship of states to government, and a civil war to end the matter. Latin America was much less fortunate. Many colonies experienced conservative revolts-not changes in the rights of man, but only a switch in rulers. They fought tremendous conflicts over the issue of central vs. federal rule, an issue that would continue through the 19th and 20th centuries. “Reform” was mainly at an abstract level. Some intellectuals favored democratic government, abolition of slavery, and land reform, and they meant it, in principle if not in practice. Social reforms as we would understand them today, such as equal justice for all and wide suffrage, were not contemplated. Largely lacking a middle class, elitists spoke for the masses in Latin America. The English Colonies Fight for Independence England had emerged the major victor in the French and Indian War. France ceded Canada to Great Britain in the Peace of Paris in 1763, then turned over Lousiana, the vast heartland of the North American continent, to Spain as a consolation prize for Spain’s loss of Florida. Spain in turn had yielded Florida to regain Cuba, taken by England during the war. The end result of all these changes was the creation of the British Empire. Parliament soon found that it cost money to run an empire, and someone would have to pay that cost. The oldest of the thirteen colonies, Virginia, had been founded more than 150 years earlier; all but Georgia were more than eighty years old. Over the decades Great Britain had ruled with benign neglect, not even enforcing the Navigation Acts that restricted 204 colonial manufacturing, and turning a blind eye towards the widespread smuggling that was making merchants such as John Hancock very rich. All this was about to change. The summer of 1763 revealed unsettled conditions on the western frontier and a major rebellion among the Ottawa, led by Chief Pontiac. Parliament decided that the best way to deal with colonial conflicts with Indians was to keep them separated. Accordingly, in October Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763. It drew a boundary line across the Appalachian mountain range, west of which the Indians were to live, and east of which the colonists were supposed to stay. Many colonists, however, had already crossed the mountains, either as soldiers during the recent war or because they had heard stories of fertile farmland. It was unreasonable from the colonial point of view to restrict them to the eastern side of the Appalachians. For Parliament, the issue was just another headache given them by the cantankerous colonists. Meanwhile, the problem of obtaining revenue to run the empire plagued a series of mediocre parliamentary ministries during the 1760s. The members of Parliament generally agreed that the colonies should pay their fair share of the cost of maintaining troops for their defense, including supplies, equipment, and all the other items needed by the military. It seemed easy enough for Parliament to impose a tax on sugar, but an even better one was to put a tax on the use of paper. Revenue stamps would have to be purchased and placed on all documents. The colonials quickly realized that “all” documents meant bills of sale, newspaper, deeds, and even packages of playing cards. The Stamp Act united the colonies as no other issue had previously done. They organized a Stamp Act Congress and set up an effective boycott of British imports. Merchants in England, cut off from colonial business, demanded that Parliament withdraw the act. This was done, though Parliament saved face by passing a Declaratory Act reminding the colonials that Parliament still made the laws. The colonists knew this but protested the passage of tax laws anyway. They complained that Parliament had no members from the colonies-the famous expression “taxation without representation.” The representation issue was pretty much a smokescreen. Parliament for centuries had been based on an allotment of seats to cities, 205 but by the 18th century old cities had declined in population while retaining the seats, while “new” industrial cities such as Manchester had no seats. The issue of parliamentary reform went on for years, and not until the reform bills of the 1830s was it finally resolved. In the meantime, Parliament defended the system by arguing everyone, whether living in Great Britain or the colonies, was represented by “virtual representation.” That is, the members of Parliament represented the entire nation, not just the cities that elected them. Even if Parliament would have granted seats to the colonies, the number would have been small, the majority in Parliament would have approved the taxes, and the colonists would still have been unhappy. Between 1764 and 1773 Parliament tried a number of tax laws as one ministry followed another. Tensions grew between colonists and the soldiers sent to protect them. The notorious “Boston Massacre” in March 1770, in which British soldiers fired on a mob of colonists the soldiers perceived as a threat to them, exemplified the alienation between colonists and mother country. The deciding issue for the colonists occurred in 1774. The East India Company’s tea harvest had produced a surplus of tea. By judicious and generous gifts of East India Company stock to members of Parliament, the company won an exclusive monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. Not only that, but the tax on tea was reduced below the point where smugglers could make a living delivering tax-free tea. The difference was that Parliament intended to enforce the tax collection as never before. The colonists recognized the tea tax for what it was, and Boston merchants refused to unload the tea. On December 16, 1774, a group of colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the tea ships and dumped the cargo into Boston Harbor. Parliament responded by passing what the colonists (and U.S. history textbooks) called the Intolerable Acts-a series of harsh laws designed to punish the Massachusetts colony for its illegal protest. The colonies organized a Continental Congress to petition Parliament on colonial grievances, but attempts to work out a compromise or address the taxation issue were unsuccessful. When the British Army attempted to arrest colonial ringleaders and confiscate weapons, the colonists fought back. April 19, 1775, marked “the shot heard round the world” and the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but it was not yet a 206 war for independence. A provisional government, the Second Continental Congress, represented the thirteen colonies. Selection of George Washington, a Virginian, as leader of the Continental Army helped persuade the colonies that all were involved in the dispute with Parliament, not just Massachusetts. Still, perhaps a third of the colonial population opposed a break with Great Britain. The first major battle between colonials and the British Army was fought at Bunker Hill, Massachusetts (actually Breed’s Hill) on June 17, 1775. It resulted in no clear victory for either side. George III declared the colonies in rebellion and supplemented British forces by hiring Hessian mercenaries. Royal governors hastily left the colonies that then organized new governments. In the spring of 1776 Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense, in which he argued that the colonies needed a clear purpose and goal. That goal was independence. His pamphlet was widely distributed and reprinted, and it influenced many colonists towards forming an independent nation. The Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to write a declaration of independence, actually a justification for the motion for independence that the delegates would vote on. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and two other men served on the committee. As is typical with committee projects, Jefferson did almost all of the writing. He cleverly presented his grievances as a series of “facts” that were actually accusations. Jefferson ignored Parliament as the source of colonial discontent and blamed George III for a long list of repressions directed at the colonies. To read the Declaration of Independence is to admire Jefferson’s audacity. The Continental Congress approved the motion “that these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,” on July 2, and set July 4, the date when the Declaration was presented to the delegates, as Independence Day. Benjamin Franklin went to France and persuaded Louis XVI to agree to two treaties, one dealing with trade and commerce, the other a formal alliance between France and the new United States. France guaranteed the independence of the new nation. In return, the U.S. would be an ally of France in any future war with Great Britain, with American help going to French colonies in the West Indies. France’s entry into the war prompted Spain to join as a French ally (technically not an ally of the 207 U.S.) in hopes of regaining its lost Florida colony. As if Great Britain did not have enough problems, Holland also declared war against the British. General Washington lost more battles than he won, and throughout the war he had to deal with troops leaving because of expired enlistments, desertions, lack of supplies, weapons, and ammunition, and colonials who saw nothing wrong with trading with the enemy. In the fall of 1781 the main British Army under General Cornwallis made the mistake of going into winter quarters at Yorktown, Virginia, on a peninsula. Washington saw his chance and laid siege to Yorktown. The French fleet bottled up the British on the peninsula and prevented them from getting supplies and reinforcements. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. His defeat proved a major blow to the British. Although diplomatic negotiations would continue for another two years, and lives would be lost in skirmishes, the war essentially ended with the Yorktown victory. According to the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States. The new nation’s boundaries extended to the Mississippi River to the west, somewhat vaguely around the Great Lakes, and to Florida in the south. Spain won Florida back from Great Britain, though it did not get back Gibraltar. American fishermen were granted rights to fish off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. One important issue remained unsettled: during the war the Continental Congress had confiscated the estates of Tories (colonists opposed to independence and remaining loyal to George III). Settling this question took well over a decade, and the British refused to evacuate their forts in the Great Lakes area until the Tories were compensated. Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, Iroquois, Shawnee, Chippewa, and others had sided with the British during the war. U.S. agents held conferences with them and pointed out the Indians had been treasonable. They exacted “settlements” of land cessions, placed some tribes on reservations, and tried to smooth out the tensions with gifts and annuities. Some pacified Indians acculturated to American society. They learned English, took up farming, and gave up the old ways. Others remained hostile, and problems between Native Americans and the U.S. government would fester for another fifty years east of the Mississippi River boundary. 208 The new nation found buffer zones hard to come by. Spain controlled territory west of the Mississippi River and lower Louisiana, including the mouth of the great river. The southeastern region would be a hotbed of intrigues and plots until the early 1800s. The first constitution of the new nation, the Articles of Confederation, went into effect on March 1, 1781, replacing the Second Continental Congress. Severely limited in its power, it made the United States more a collection of individual states than a unified nation. It could not levy taxes or coin money, or even establish tariffs on foreign imports. Each state had one vote in the Confederation Congress, though several delegates might represent a state. Passing an ordinance required nine of the thirteen votes; amendment of the Articles needed unanimous consent. Before long, ambiguities in the new government’s operation provoked the states. Boundary disputes between states could not be adjudicated since the Articles provided no instructions about them. Individual states printed their own money and would not honor the money of other states. The new nation owed a massive foreign and domestic debt but had no credit or much income either. Faced with these problems, the Confederation Congress called for a convention to meet at Philadelphia in May 1787 to work out remedies. Almost immediately the delegates agreed to scrap the Articles and created an entirely new constitution. Between May and September the delegates hammered out a national government with far greater authority than the Articles of Confederation. The legislative branch would have two chambers, a Senate with two members from each state, appointed by their legislatures, and a House of Representatives, elected by popular vote from districts within each state. A complex process called the Electoral College would choose a President to lead the executive branch of the government. If a presidential candidate won a majority of the vote in a state, that state’s votes all went to him, winner take all, regardless how close the vote might have been. A federal judiciary, appointed for life, comprised the third branch. The new government would have the power to levy taxes, pass laws affecting all states, regulate commerce, coin money, and other strong powers. Many historians have described the Constitution as a “bundle of compromises.” Small states resisted the power of large states; an educated 209 elite distrusted the masses; selection of a national executive in the form of a president was a convoluted affair. Until 1820 the popular vote for president was not recorded nationally. In its original form the Constitution was not particularly democratic, as voters could elect a person directly for only one national office, their local congressman in the House of Representatives. The Electoral College chose the president, the state legislators chose the senators, and the Supreme Court justices and other federal judges held their posts for life. Many states, concerned they were trading King George III’s autocracy for a new central government tyranny, made their acceptance of the Constitution conditional with adopting a Bill of Rights. By 1791 the Bill of Rights, ratified as part of the new Constitution, was in place, and the first independent nation in the Western Hemisphere was under way. Revolutions in Latin America The Spanish American Wars for Independence came from similar roots as the grievances of the British colonists. Economic complaints were high on the list. Colonies could only sell their raw materials to Spain, and the mother country controlled the importation of finished products. Since Spain could not supply much of these products, and regulations restricting commerce were unrealistic in facing the competition with other countries, contraband trade was extensive. Even the officials sent out to control smuggling accepted bribes to look the other way. The criollo class, disaffected by the quality of leadership provided by viceroys and lesser administrators, chafed at their inability to initiate policies in their own colonies. Spain had long practiced appointing peninsular Spaniards (born in Spain) to rule over colonial-born criollos, despite the possible incompetence of the former or the abilities of the latter. But little ideology seems to have informed the move for independence. Democratic government, social reforms, and equality remained abstract issues. The criollo elite believed the time had come to be freed from colonial rule, but the elite saw independence as a change of rulers, with themselves in the leadership position. The many colonies, spread across one continent and a large part of another, created unique circumstances for revolts that varied widely in 210 their goals from one place to another. Several examples may illustrate the many comparisons and contrasts. The first major revolt against European rule in Latin America did not occur in a Spanish colony. Saint Domingue (now Haiti) occupied the western third of the island of Hispanola (also called Santo Domingo), and it had been a French colony since France acquired it from Spain in 1697. France obtained considerable revenue from sugar, coffee, cotton, and indigo, plantation products produced by slave labor. By 1800 there were half a million whites in the colony and almost as many slaves. An elite of wealthy white planters dominated the economy, envied by the poor whites, and both groups were concerned over the growing numbers of freedmen. French policy declared that children of mixed-race marriages were free. But the impetus for revolution came from the slaves. Just three years after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, the slaves rose in revolt against their masters. One slave leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, emerged from the struggle as a man of unusual talent and ability. Literate and well educated (by a kindly master), L’Ouverture united the slaves into a coherent force that successfully resisted the French army sent to put down the revolt. The revolution in France inspired the slaves even as it alarmed the planters. When Napoleon came to power in France, he wanted the revenues from the plantations, and that meant ending the revolt and a return to the status quo. He used deception to trick L’Ouverture into accepting an apparent truce. L’Ouverture was arrested and taken to France, where he died in prison in 1803. Other leaders, however, such as Henri Christophe and Jean Jacques Dessalines, continued the fight and won complete independence. Tragically, France left the former colony in chaos, and its subsequent history as an independent nation would be marred with repression and dictatorship. Napoleon’s European campaigns led directly to revolt in the Spanish American colonies. In 1808 he sent his army into Spain and overwhelmed the government. Carlos IV abdicated, and his son, Ferdinand VII, was interned in Paris. Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on an alleged throne, taking over Portugal at the same time. This aggression prompted colonial declarations of loyalty to Ferdinand VII and revolts against the French takeover of Spain. 211 In Mexico, the original idea for revolt was to protest against the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte as a usurper, but the revolt quickly mutated into something entirely different. Several plots were planned, but information leaks prompted their cancellation. One plot, however, was well under way, and its leaders decided to go ahead. The motive force behind this effort was Father Miguel Hidalgo, an unusual priest who sided with the mestizos and Indians rather than the elite. The main goal was to revolt in the name of Ferdinand VII and gain some independence from the Spanish government, but Hidalgo soon revealed his own agenda. He decided to involve the Indians and made promises of economic and social reforms a century ahead of their time. On September 16, 1810, Hidalgo proclaimed Mexico’s independence in his famous Grito de Dolores, raised an Indian army, and marched on Mexico City. At first he was successful, his army winning one battle after another. His army, unfortunately, had no training as such and committed atrocities to avenge past grievances. Criollo leaders became alarmed at the excesses and at goals so far beyond their own revolutionary intentions. The Catholic Church excommunicated Hidalgo and those who followed him. When Hidalgo failed to capture Mexico City, the tide turned against him, and a well-armed criollo army moved to put down his revolt. By March 1811 Hidalgo’s revolt was over. He was captured, tried, and executed, along with other revolt leaders. Some resistance, most notably by Jose Maria Morelos and Vicente Guerrero, continued for about four more years. Ironically, Agustin de Iturbide, the criollo officer who had captured Hidalgo, completed the fight for Mexico’s independence in 1821not for democracy but against it, as conservative Mexicans had no wish to be ruled by a restored and more liberal Spanish government. Iturbide had himself made emperor of the new nation, but he lasted only a year. Mexico’s first fifty years of independence would be marked by struggles for power between centralists and federalists, a war with the United States, and an invasion by French aggressors. South America presented a huge arena for revolutionary struggle. In some areas colonies fought a civil war among themselves in attempting to define national boundaries, an issue that endures to the present day. In northern South America, Simon Bolivar set up the nation of Gran 212 Colombia, consisting of today’s Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, but his creation fell apart as each region struggled to preserve its own identity. Gran Colombia did not survive Bolivar’s lifetime. Buenos Aires Province experienced the rivalry between the centralist portenos of Buenos Aires and the federalist interior gauchos who at times sided with the Royalists, other times with the revolutionaries. Paraguay, Buenos Aires (soon to become Argentina), and the Banda Oriental (modern Uruguay) struggled for definition. Ferdinand VII earned much of the blame for the disruption of his colonies. During his imprisonment the Spanish people had revolted against the French invaders. Acting in the name of their absent captive king, they fought bitter battles against superior French forces. England, fighting France, became allied with the Spanish resistance. In 1812 the Spanish Cortes (government) adopted a liberal constitution that provided for a limited monarchy and civil liberties. The new constitution did little for the Spanish American colonies, however, beyond indicating that the political and economic colonial structure would remain intact. Still, Spanish American leaders saw Spain’s distress as an opportunity, and they confused an already muddled war by challenging colonial officials as to whether they supported Joseph Bonaparte or Ferdinand VII. Royalists, however, doubted the sincerity of criollo pledges of loyalty to Ferdinand VII. Napoleon’s ambitions ultimately exceeded his attempts to control events. His war on Russia ended disastrously, and he was forced to abdicate his throne and go into temporary exile on the island of Elba. He attempted a comeback early in 1815, but he suffered a final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, one of those events historians call a “turning point in history.” The British exiled him to the island of St. Helena, a flyspeck in the south Atlantic, where he died six years later. Meanwhile, the victors met at Vienna, Austria, to try to put Europe back together again. Much like the king’s horses and king’s men who could not reassemble Humpty Dumpty, the monarchs and ministers found it difficult to restore Europe to its earlier political status quo. Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine had reduced the number of central European kingdoms from 300 to less than 40, and no one knew how to untangle what he had done. 213 Ferdinand VII proved a most ungrateful king. In a futile attempt to turn the clock back, he repudiated the 1812 constitution and made it clear the colonies should give up the rights they had asserted for themselves in his name when opposing the Bonapartes. He planned to send troops to Spanish America to put down any rebellions, but in January 1820 a regiment mutinied rather than go there, and Ferdinand had to restore the liberal constitution. Meanwhile, Simon Bolivar’s army liberated Venezuela, moved on to Quito (a major Spanish stronghold in the Andes), and advanced on Peru. Jose de San Martin raised armies that did similar work in the southern half of the continent. Bolivar and San Martin were but two of the great patriots who fought to liberate the South American colonies from Spanish rule. Antonio Jose Sucre in Ecuador, Bernardo O’Higgins in Chile, Jose Antonio Paez in Venezuela, and many other leaders survived the twists and turns of the political ferment to make memorable achievements in the liberation of their nations. Bolivar is sometimes referred to as the “George Washington of South America,” but his dedication and success could well reverse the title to make Washington “the Bolivar of North America.” The last South American nation to achive independence from Spain was Uruguay in 1828. By then only two colonies in the Western Hemisphere remained under Spanish control, Cuba and Puerto Rico. Off and on, the wars of independence had taken the better part of two decades. Were they revolutions? Only in the political sense. Problems of social structure in the colonies would remain unchanged, and economic development was shunted aside as the 19th century became a time of political turmoil for most of Latin America. The Bloodless Brazilian Revolution In contrast to the rest of Latin America, Brazil achieved its independence without bloodshed. When Napoleon’s army invaded Portugal in March 1807, Prince Regent John moved the entire royal court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, including his insane Queen Mother. The ships, supplied by the British, carried civil, religious, and military leaders, members of high society, and professional people. The royal treasurydiamonds, silver plate, jewels, and heirlooms-along with books, religious 214 objects, printing presses, maps, the royal library, and government files, all went on the ships. This collection of people and the machinery of state crowded onto the ships, with too many passengers for the space. Women had to cut their hair since washing it was impossible. When they arrived in Brazil, the colonial ladies assumed short hair was the latest European fashion and cut their own. On landing at Bahia, John set up the machinery of administration, and life became a series of celebrations for the rescue of the royal family. John showed his gratitude by reducing prison sentences and granting pardons. He promised to improve roads, started a school of medicine, and gave out titles and decorations. Soon the royal court moved to Rio de Janeiro, and there in effect recreated the sovereign state of Portugal in Brazil. John’s decrees formalized all actions taken, and many laws were passed that would not have been had Brazil remained only a colony. In effect, John made Brazil over in the image of the mother country. The makeover made up for decades if not centuries of neglect in education, a lack of libraries, newspapers, printing presses, and intellectual repressions. John set up schools, with courses in agriculture, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and cartography. He recognized the power and privilege already in the country by rewarding the colonial elite with nonhereditary titles, among them 28 marquises, eight counts, sixteen vicounts, 21 barons, 4,084 knights, etc. He also set up a tax system and continued the dictatorial powers of local officials. In 1815 he raised Brazil to the rank of kingdom, making it coequal with the mother country. In 1820 Portuguese leaders completed the restoration of their government and demanded that John return to Lisbon. They wanted him to end the dual monarchy he had created; he was king of Portugal, and they wanted him there, not in Brazil. By 1822 John’s courtiers were homesick for Portugal anyway. John approved the new constitution and sailed for Portugal, never to return to Brazil. He left Dom Pedro, his son and heir, as regent for Brazil. When the Portuguese Cortes revoked all the liberties Brazil had been granted since 1808, Dom Pedro refused to obey the government’s demand that he return. On September 7, 1822 (Brazil’s official independence day), Dom Pedro proclaimed the Cry of Ipiranga, “Independence or Death.” The rhetoric wasn’t really necessary, since Portugal didn’t put up a fight. In December Dom Pedro became the 215 constitutional emperor of Brazil. The monarchy would last there until 1889. Independence How to define the boundaries of the new Latin American nations? Under the doctrine of uti posseditis, new states would have the boundaries of the old colonies. Most of these had been poorly defined, however, and friction over boundaries would continue down through the 20th century. There seemed to be no middle ground in Latin American society. A privileged minority controlled land and offices, and the mass of peasants and workers had no power. To gain true independence the United States had to fight two wars with Great Britain, the American Revolution and the War of 1812, and fight off numerous cabals and intrigues, from the Whiskey Rebellion to Aaron Burr’s plot, before stability was assured. Even then, issues of central government vs. states rights, and the controversy over slavery, would eventually plunge the United States into civil war. In Latin America, independence did not fulfill the idealistic visions of its supporters. Bolivar’s Gran Colombia fell apart, and later in the century Paraguay would fight a bloody war against the combined forces of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. Chile would fight Bolivia and Peru. Social, economic, and geographic factors would challenge the new nations. The political exchange of old rulers for new would not be enough to solve the problems of nationhood. 216 For Further Reading Alden, John R. The American Revolution (1954). Anna, Timothy A. Spain and the Loss of America (1985). Countryman, Edward. The American Revolution (1985). Gipson, Lawrence H. The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (1954). Hamill, Hugh F. The Hidalgo Revolt (1966). Humphreys, Robin A., and Lynch, John, eds. The Origins of the Latin American Revolutions, 1808-1826 (1965). Johnson, John. Simon Bolivar and Spanish-American Independence, 1783-1830 (1968). Lynch, John. The Spanish-American Revolutions, 1808-1826 (1973). Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic (1956). Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People at War (1979). Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969). 217 INDEX. Abolition movement against slavery, 97-98 Academia real das Sciencias (Portuguese Royal Academy of Science), 207 Acosta, Juan de, 178 Adams, John, 216 Africa, explored by Portugal, 9-11 African slave trade, 10, 85-98, 139 Africans, in Conquest of Americas, 76 Age of Discovery, 6-8, 50 Aguilar, Jeronimo de, 37 Alarcon, Hernando de, 61 Albuquerque, Antonio de, 114 Alcabala, 167 Aldeias, 105 Alexander VI (Pope), 14, 69 Almagro, Diego de, 39, 42-43 Almojarifazgo, 167 Amazon River, 45 Alvarado, Pedro de, 38, 60 America, discovery by Vikings, 5-6; named for Amerigo Vespucci, 17 American Philosophical Society, 206 American Revolution, 211, 213-219 Amigos del Pais (Economic Friends of the Nation), 202; in Latin America, 205 Amistad, slave ship and revolt, 92 Angola, 109; and Brazil, 109-113 Anne (English Queen), 188-190 Arab Explorations, 15-16 Articles of Confederation, 218 Artisans, 78 Asiento, 89 Asuncion, Paraguay, 80 Atahualpa, 39-41 Audiencias, 72 Auto-da-fe, 153 Aztecs, 24; settling in Valley of Mexico, 25; religious beliefs, 25-27; social classes, 28; agriculture, 29 Bahamas colony, 145 Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 55, 59 218 Bandeiras, bandeirantes, 111-112, 151 Barbados, 182 Bolivar, Simon, 222-223 Bonaparte, Joseph, 221-222 Boston Massacre, 215 Bougainville, Louis de, 53 Bourbons (Spanish royal house), 163 Braganza (Portuguese royalhouse after 1640), 113 Brazil, 101-116; gold rush, 113-114; in Enlightenment, 207 Brazilwood, 103 British Guiana colony, 145 Brookes, slave ship, 91, 998 Bucareli, Antonio Maria, 161 Burr, Aaron, 225 Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez, 59-61 Cabildos (town councils), 159 Cabot, John, 133 Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, 14, 101 Cabrillo, Juan Rodriguez, 63 Caciques (chiefs), 161 California, 60-61, 63, 194; as an island, 54, 178 Cape Blanco, 10 Cape Bojador, 10 Carlos I (also Charles V), ruler of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, 33, 39, 41-42, 74, 166, 181 Carlos II (Spanish king), 114, 186, 189 Carlos III (Spanish king), 151, 156, 163, 192, 200-204 Carlos IV (Spanish king), 96, 163, 203, 204, 220 Cartier, Jacques, 120-121 Carvajal, Fr. Gaspar de, 45 Casa de Contratacion (Board of Trade), 158, 172 casa grande, 111 Castro, Vaca de, 43 Catherine of Braganza, 187 Catherine the Great (Empress of Russia), 200 Catholic Church in the Americas, 149-163 Cervantes, Miguel de, 198 Champlain, Samuel, 123-124 219 Charles (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”), 192 Charles I (English king), 140-141, 186-187 Charles II (English king), 142-143, 183, 187 Charles VI (Emperor of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor), 191 Charles IX (French king), 122 Christophe, Henri, 220 Chibcha people, 44 Chinese explorations, 15-16 Clarkson, Thomas (abolitionist), 91, 98 Clergy, regular and secular, 149 Coelho, Duarte, 104 Cofradias (brotherhoods), 150 Coligny, Gaspar de, 121 Colonization, defined, 49 Columbus, Christopher, 11-14, 19, 120, 135; “discovers” America, 13; later voyages, 16-17, 53 Compilation of the Laws of the Indies, 159 Conilha, Pedro de, 11 Conquest, defined, 49; reasons for success, 67; justification, 68 Constitution (U.S.), 218-219 Cornwallis, Charles, 217 Coronado, Francisco Vasquez de, 44, 62-63 Cortes, Hernando, 23, 35-38, 59-60, 69-70 Council of the Indies (Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies), 158-159 Couriers du bois, 125 Criollos, 77, 204-205, 219 Cromwell, Oliver, 141, 187 Cruz, Sor Juana Ines de la, 176 Cry of Ipiranga (Brazilian independence), 225 Darien, 185-186 Debt peonage, 86 Declaratory Act, 214 Declaration of Independence, 216 Deism, 200 Del Cano, Juan Sebastian, 55 Descartes, Rene, 198, 205 Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 220 Dias, Bartholomeu, 11 Diderot, Denis, 199 220 Diego, Juan, sees Virgin of Guadalupe, 150 Diseases in the Americas, 81 Doctrine of Consent, 119 Donatario system, 104 Douceur, le, 120 Drake, Francis, 135, 186 Dutch in Brazil, 106-109 East India Company, 215 Eco, Umberto, 52 Economy of Spanish America, 165-173 Edinborough Company, 185 Edward VI (English king), 134 El Dorado (the “Golden Man”), 44 Elizabeth I (English queen), 134-137, 156, 181 Emboabas (“late-comers”), 114 Encomienda system, 70, 170 England in the Americas, 133-146 England and Caribbean colonies, 145 Enlightenment and the Americas, 197-208 Eric the Red, 5 Erickson, Leif, 5 Estancias (ranchos), 170 Estevanico, 59, 61-62 Exploration, defined, 49 Explorations (Spain), 59-64 Ferdinand V (Spanish king, ruler of Aragon), 69, 133, 152-153 Ferdinand VI (Spanish king), 201 Ferdinand VII (Spanish king), 221-222 Feyjoo y Montenegro, Benito Geronimo, 201 -202 Fleets (flotas), 172-173 France in the Americas, 119-130; in Brazil, 122 -123; in Canada, 123-125; in Mississippi Valley, 125-128 Francis I (French king), 120 Francis II (French king), 122 Franklin, Benjamin, 206, 216 Frederick II (king of Prussia), 191, 200 French and Indian War (7 Years’ War), 192-193 French colonies in South America and Caribbean, 129-130 221 French Guiana, 129 French Revolution, 202, 211, 220 Frobisher, Martin, 57 Frontenac, Louis de, 126-127 Galileo, 7, 198 Gama, Vasco de, 14-15 Gante, Fr. Pedro de, 176 Guachos, 222 George I (English king), 190 George II (English king), 144 George III (English king), 216 Georgia colony, 144, 185 Gilbert, Humphrey, 57 Glorious Revolution of 1688, 188 Godoy, Manuel de, 203-204 Gongora, Luis de, 174 Gongorism, 174-175 Government in the Americas, 157-163 Gran Colombia, 222, 225 Great Migration (of Puritans), 141, 184 Gregory VII ( Pope), 198 Grijalva, Juan de, 36 Grito de Dolores (Mexican independence), 221 Guarani Indians, 46, 80 Guerrero, Vicente, 221 Habsburg monarchs, 33, 107, 166, 171, 186, 201 Haciendas (estates), 72, 170 Hamilton, Earl J. (economist), 167 Hancock, John, 214 Hanover (English royal house), 190 Harrison, John, 52 Hawikuh (Zuni pueblo), 62 Hawkins, John, 135 Henry II (French king), 122, 181 Henry IV (French king), 123-124 Henry VII (English king), 133 Henry VIII (English king), 133-134 Henry the Navigator (Portuguese prince), 9-10 Hernandez de Cordoba, Francisco, 36 Hessians, 212 Heyn, Piet, 107 Hidalgo, Fr. Miguel, 221 222 Hobbes, Thomas, 198 Holland (Netherlands, Dutch) in Brazil, 106-109 Hooker, Thomas, 141 Huascar (Inca ruler), 39 Huayna-Capac (Incaruler), 39, 81 Hudson, Henry, 57-58, 124-125, 143 Hudson’s Bay Fur Company, 125 Huguenots (French Protestants), 121 Huitzilopochtli (Aztec Sun God), 26,38, 150 Hume, David, 198 Huron people, 124 Inca Empire, 29, 39-42 Indentured servants and servitude, 93 Indians of Brazil, 105 Inquisition, 152-155, 201, 203 Intellectual trends in Americas, 1784-178 Intendencia system, 163 International rivalries, 181-194 Interregnum, 142 Intolerable Acts, 215 Iroquois, 124, 127 Isabella (Spanish queen, ruler of Castile), 12-13, 16, 133, 152-153 Jamaica colony, 145-182 James I (English king), 44, 138, 186, 190 James II (English king), 144, 187-190; as Duke of York 143 James III (the “Old Pretender”), 188 Jamestown colony, 137-139 Jefferson, Thomas, 206, 216 Jenkins, Robert, loses an ear, 191 Jesuits, 151, 201 Jews, expelled from Spain, 166; and the Inquisition, 153-154 Jimenez de Quesada, Gonzalo, 43-44 John II (also Jao, Portuguse king), 11 John IV (also Jao, Portuguese king), 113 John VI (also Jao, prince regent, later Portuguese king), 224 Joliet, Louis, 126-127 Joseph II (Emperor of Austria), 200 Jovellanos, Gaspar de, 202-204 223 Keen, Benjamin (historian), 186 Kidd, William, 182 King George’s War (War of the Austrian Succession), 191-192 King Philip (Metacom of Wampanoag tribe), 184 King Philip’s War, 184 King Willliam’s War (also called War of the League of Augsburg and Nine Years’ War), 188-189 Kino, Eusebio, 149 La Salle, Sieur (Rene Robert Cavalier), 127-128 Laissez-faire trade, 202 Las Casas, Bartolome de, 69,70, 74, 149, 178 Latifundios, 170 Latitude (parallels), 52 Lavradores, 111 Laws of Burgos, 69, 157 Leon, Ponce de, 59 Leopold I (ruler of Austria), 188 Locke, John, 198 Longitude (meridians), 52, 178 Lopez de Cardenas, Garcia, 62 Lord Dunsmore, 192 Louis XIV (French king), 127, 186-190 Louis XV (French king), 128, 192, 199-200 Louis XVI (French king), 203 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 220 Luces, 203 Lumieres, 200, 202 Magellan, Ferdinand, 53-56, 120, 135 Malinche (Dona Marina), 37 Manco Inca (Inca ruler), 42-43 Manila Galeon, 173 Marco Polo, 7-8 Marcos de Niza, Fray, 61 Maria Luisa (Spanish queen), 203-204 Maria Theresa (Empress of Austria), 191 Marquette, Jacques, 126-127 Mary (English queen), 134 Mary (English queen, wife of Willliam III), 188 224 Mary of Modena, 188 Mary Queen of Scots, 122 Maryland colony, 142 Maurits, Johan, 107-108 Mayflower (Pilgrim ship), 140 Mayflower Compact, 140 Medici, Catherine de, 122 Mendoza de Negra, Alvarado de, 53 Mendoza, Antonio de (viceroy), 60-63, 161, 176 Menendez de Aviles, Pedro, 122 Mercantilism, 166 Mercator, Gerhard, 51 Merchants in Hispanic society, 78 Mesada and media ante, 168 Mesta, 170 Mestizo, 77, 171 Mita, 72-73 Moctezuma II, 35-38, 68 Montaigne, Michele de, 205 Montesinos, Fr. Antonio de, 69 Montesquieu, Charles, 199,201 Morelos, Jose Maria, 221 Morgan, Henry, 182-183 Mound Builders of Mississippi Valley, 29 Mulatto, 77 Munk, Jens, 58 58 Muslims, expelled from Spain, 166 Napoleon Bonaparte, 96, 204, 211, 220-223 Narvaez, Panfilo de, 59 Native peoples of the Americas, 19-20; arrival in Americas, 21-22; reasons for defeat by conquistadors, 23-24 New Granada, 44, 46 New Hampshire colony, 142 New Laws of 1542, 75 New Orleans, founded, 128 New Netherlands, 107-108 Newspapers in the Americas, 205-206 Newton, Isaac, 198 “no peace beyond the line” policy, 182, 186 Noche Triste, 38 Nootka Sound Convention, 194 225 North Carolina colony, 143 Northwest Passage, 56-59, 63, 121 Nova Albion (Pacific Coast), 135 Nunez Vela, Blanco (viceroy), 43 Occupations in colonial Hispanic society, 78 O’Higgins, Bernardo, 223 Open Polar Sea (Paleocrystic Sea), 58 Ordonez de Montalvo, Garci, 60 Orellana, Francisco de, 45 Paez, Jose Antonio, 223 Paine, Thomas, 206-207, 216 Pampas, 113 Paulistas, 114 Peary, Robert, 58 Pedrarias Davila, 39 Pedro I (first king of Brazil), 224-225 Penn, William, 143-144 Pennsylvania colony, 143-144 Philip II (Spanish king), 56, 134-135, 152, 155, 173, 177, 181, 186 Philip III (Spanish king), 107,186 Phjlip IV (Spanish king), 107, 186 Philip V (Spanish king), 201 Philippines, 173 Pilgrims (Separatists), 140, 184 Pirates, 182-183 Pizarro, Francisco, 23, 39-43, 59 Pizarro, Gonzalo, 40, 43, 45 Pizarro, Pedro, 40 Plantation slavery, 88, 96-97 Pocahontas, 138 Portenos, 222 Portugal, explorations, 8-11; and slave trade, 88; and Brazil, 101-116; and race relations, 115-116 presidios, 151 Prester John, 8 Primogeniture, 75 Proclamation of 1763, 214 Ptolemy (Roman geographer), 9, 55; Ptolemaic 226 geography, 9 Pueblo peoples of North America, 29 Puritans, 140-142, 184 Quebec, founded, 124 Quetzalcoatl, 26-27, 35 Quinto (royal 20%), 34, 114, 167 Racial identification, 77 Raleigh, Walter, 44, 136, 145 Reconquista, 33 Religion in the Americas, 149-157 Repartimiento, 72, 170 Requerimiento, 69 Restoration colonies, 143-144 Revillagigedo, Count (viceroy), 161 Ribaut, Jean, 121-122 Richelieu, Cardinal, 124 Roanoke colony, 136-137 Roosevelt, Theodore, 50 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 199-200, 202, 205 Royal African Company, 90 Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio, 149 Sa, Salvador de, 112-113 Sacred Expedition, 194 Sahagun, Bernardino de, 178 Saint Domingue (also Santo Domingo), 129, 183, 204, 220 San Juan de Letran, 176 Sanbenito (penitence garment), 153 Sandoval, Alonzo de, 178 San Martin, Jose de, 223 Scurvy, 51, 124 Seaflower, 185 Sebastian (Portuguese king), 107 Sergas de Esplandian, Las, 60 Serra, Junipero, 149 Settlement, defined, 49 Seven Cities of Gold, 60-63 Siguenza y Gongora, Carlos, 175-176 Slave revolts, 92 Slave trade, beginnings, 10 Slavery, rationales for, 93-94 227 Slaves, purchase price, 89 Smith, Adam, 202 Smith, John, 138 Solomon Islands, 53 Soto, Hernando de, 63, 81, 127 South Carolina colony, 143 South Sea Company, 191 Spanish Armada, 136 Stamp Act Congress, 214 Strait of Anian, 63, 135 Stuart, (English royal house), 142, 190 Sweden and North America, 143 Syncretism, 156 Taxes, 167-168 Tecazlipoca, 26, 150 Terra nulllius, 119, 125 Thatch, Edward (Blackbeard), 182 Tlacaellel, 26 Toledo, Francisco de (viceroy), 43, 72 Tortuga, 182 Transients in Hispanic society, 79 Treaty of Aix-la-Chappele, 192 Treaty of Madrid, 115, 183 Treaty of Paris (1763), 193 Treaty of Paris (1783), 217 Treaty of Ryswick, 183, 189 Treaty of Tordesillas, 14, 115, 119 Treaty of Utrecht, 191 Triangular Trade, 96 Tribute, 71 Tudor (English royal house), 133-134 Tupac Amaru, 43 Tupac Amaru II, 43 Ulloa, Antonio, 155 Ulloa, Francisco de, 61 Ultramontanists, 204 University of Mexico, 177 University of Salamanca, 177 University of San Marcos, 177 University of Santo Domingo, 177 Urdaneta, Andres, 56, 173 Uti posseditis, 225 228 Velasquez, Diego de, 36 Verrazano, Giovanni, 120 Vespucci, Amerigo, 17 Viceroys in the Americas, 159-163 Viceroyalties, 160-161 Vikings in America, 5-6 Virgin of Guadalupe, 150 “virtual representation,” 215 Vizinho, Joseph, 11 Voltaire, Jean Francois, 199, 202, 205 War of the Austrian Succession, (King George’s War), 191192 War of Jenkins’ Ear, 191 War of the League of Augsburg (King William’s War), 188-189 War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), 114, 125, 190-191 Wars of Independence, 211-225; British colonies, 213-219; Latin American colonies, 219-225 Washington, George, 192, 216-217 West Indies Company, 107 White, John, 136 Whitney, Eli, 89 Wilberforce, Wilbur (abolitionist), 98 William III (English king, husband of Mary), 188 Williams, Roger, 141 Zacuto, Abraham, 11 229